Vittorio Makes A Point

RAVE: Bravo, Polska!

2012-02-04T14:43:00.000+02:00

In my last post I ranted about the four-letter words that are an assault to online freedom and exchange of ideas and creativity, namely SOPA, PIPA and ACTA.

The online campaign against these sinister attempts at censorship on the Internet have been enormous, sustained and very bruising to those pushing for these intellectual property 'protections.' On the streets the protests have been somewhat more muted and less widespread.

Except in one European Union country. A country where the loud street protests against ACTA in particular have numbered in the hundreds of thousands and where even the national government is said to be running scared. One EU country's population is taking a very visible stand.

Is it Germany?

France?

The Netherlands?

No, no, and no again.

It's Poland.

I've seen the footage on Russia Today since last week of Polish citizens in their thousands thronging the streets and squares of Warsaw in the freezing cold, all to make their outrage at ACTA very known to their government. No other European country's populace has come close in so visible and vocal a street opposition to ACTA.

I was taken by surprise. One tends to view Poland (rather patronizingly, I now realize) as quite conservative, staunchly Catholic and very pro-American and, therefore, hardly the country one would guess would be the land in which an almost anarchic revolt against state and corporate censorship would be so vocal and so huge.

It almost made me want to hop on a plane and join them and, heck, maybe even go live in Poland!

If this is what their people are willing to do in the middle of winter (and Polish winters must be no joke) in the name of freedom and against state censorship, then that is one country that must be wholly more vibrant and alive and tuned in than I previously would have thought.

The Poles have put other Europeans to shame on this it would seem. And all power to them for that.

Bravo, Polska!

RANT: Four-Letter Assaults on Free Speech

2012-02-04T14:42:00.001+02:00

SOPA
PIPA
ACTA

These are the four letter words of our time. Okay, they're acronyms - but still akin to four letter words; of the very worst kind.

SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act
PIPA = Protect Intellectual Property Act (much longer, pedantic title, but who cares)
ACTA = Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Three pieces of legislation or agreements that are a total assault on Internet freedom, privacy and right to free speech as we know it.

Legislators and political leaders bray on and on about how the laws and agreements would be there to protect artists and writers (and billion-dollar corporations, of course) from intellectual property assaults and 'misuse' by websites and bloggers and individual users online. Supporters of ACTA stated how the agreement was tabled "as a response to "the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works," whilst Wikipedia reported how PIPA would have "the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S."

SOPA and PIPA are American(-corporatist) products, whilst ACTA is an agreement between Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States, whilst the European Union and 22 of its member states signed up to it in January of this year as well.

All to 'protect' intellectual property, of course.

The online community saw it all for what it was and thought differently. Rather strongly.

On January 18th Wikipedia shut down for a day, as did many other sites on the Web in protest against what they see as government and corporatist infringements on free exchange of ideas and creativity on the Internet. As reported by that stalwart of establishment so-called journalism, The Washington Post:

"Around the country, Americans woke up without some of the oddball essentials of online life. No Wikipedia. No Reddit, a compendium of links to stories and funny pictures that draws millions a day. And no I Can Has Cheezburger?, the world’s best-known collection of funny cat pictures."

No Wired and a host of other popular sites either, and Firefox and Google both blacked out certain parts of their landing pages to protest what they also saw as online censorship.

I have no doubt that the vociferous backlash from the online community against these travesties of 'intellectual property protection' caught legislators and their corporate pimps by surprise. Both U.S. bills have been shelved (for now, only for now), whilst ACTA has come under big opposition, most especially from a surprising quarter in the EU (see my next post).

Shutting down websites (including blogs just like mine, by the way) for 'illegal' posts, uploads and even links in the name of protecting IP is nothing more than government and corporatist censorship masquerading as 'protection.'

How will sites be monitored for these alleged IP infringements?

Where will the line be drawn on what constitutes 'intellectual property' and the sanctity of copyright (at all costs)?

Why should corporations like those in the movie, recording and porn industries have copyrights that can be endlessly renewed, going well beyond the 50 years limit that used to be normative in copyright law?

What is this really all about?

This is an assault and a colonization by governments and corporations of that last bastion of true democracy and capitalism on Earth - the Internet.

We're all a threat to them - and they know it. That is why we must fight, fight, fight these bastards, so that they leave us the hell alone in the only place where we have some semblance of freedom.

As far as the Internet is concerned, a luta continua!

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Pigs in Cruisers

2012-02-04T14:42:00.000+02:00

I love getting a good chuckle on a Friday morning, which is why I loved this golden nugget I came across on Yahoo, as reported by Reuters:

"Inmates working at a Vermont correctional unit's print shop managed to sneak a prank image of a pig into a state police crest that is emblazoned on police cars, and 30 cruisers sported the design for the last year, officials said on Thursday.

The official crest depicts a spotted cow against a background of snowy mountains, but the inmates' version featured one of the cow's spots shaped like a pig in an apparent reference to the pejorative word for police, [a] state police spokeswoman said."

Thirty police cars? And no one noticed for an entire year?

Oh my word. Fricking hilarious!

Of course, Vermont police officials got all sanctimonious about it, stating that it dishonoured the memory of all police officers who had died in the line of duty upholding law and order.

Oh, please.

They're just bloody embarrassed that a bunch of cons were able to do such a sly thing and it wasn't spotted (or, at least, reported) for a whole year.

I can just imagine how those inmates must have laughed their heads off as they plotted their porcine scheme and saw their works of art go forth...priceless.

Pigs in cruisers - I love it.

RAVE: I Need To Talk About Tilda Swinton

2012-02-02T20:27:00.001+02:00

Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin: I simply cannot remember the last time that a performance has so stunned and so haunted me.

There is a reason why this is the first time ever that I have dedicated a post on this blog to a film performance.

The acclaimed, unsettling novel by Lionel Shriver by the same name stands as one of my favourite books of recent years. The book shook me to the core. I found it utterly brilliant and utterly compelling.

Too often one hears about how a book beloved by many or critically acclaimed is made into a crass film that does it no justice or, worse still, a sub-par, cheapo made-for-TV hack job.

I didn't try to think too much about how the film version of We Need To Talk About Kevin would pan out on the big screen. A complex, tautly written book as devastating as that was always going to be difficult to transfer to that most wickedly capricious of all art forms, the movie. That much I knew.

Thankfully, this film adaptation by Lynne Ramsay is a true success.

But it really is all about Tilda Swinton's masterful performance.

I do remember being very comforted when hearing about a year or so ago that Tilda Swinton was to play the lead role of the mother, Eva Khatchadourian in the film adaptation of Shriver's novel.

I was right to be comforted in that knowledge. Tilda Swinton was superb.

I cannot recall a performance in which the subtlest flicker of the eyes or the hunching of shoulders or the twitch of a nerve in a cheek ever carried so much portent, so much gravitas, simply so much.

An imperfect character played perfectly.

Tilda Swinton's performance is beyond being the best of the year - it's simply one of the best ever. Period.

Her sublime, incredibly intelligent performance in this excellent film should be shown to all drama students and aspiring film actors. Forget the heavy emoting and the crying on tap, kids - this is how it's done.

Bravo, Tilda! I always knew you were one of a kind; one of the very, very best.

RANT: Are You Syr-ious?

2012-02-02T19:40:00.000+02:00

The whole escalating furore and ganging up by the West and certain Gulf states against Syria is, quite frankly, beyond the pale in its sheer cynicism and blatant geopolitical posturing.

It's not even posturing - it's masquerading at its most gauche and downright embarrassing.

After all, who the hell are the United States (aka Pimp and Sugar Daddy Supreme to the Apartheid State of Israel), United Kingdom, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain et al really kidding with all this jumping up and down regarding Syria and the sudden 'insurrection' by a 'populist movement' against the Assad regime?

They're certainly not kidding me, that much is for sure.

I do believe the Tunisian revolution was genuine and, to a certain degree, so too the spontaneous outpouring in Tahrir Square that toppled the heinous Mubarak regime in Egypt. I cheered loudly and joyfully for the peoples of those countries in their quest to run out corrupt, violent regimes that had ruled them for too long and too hard.

The authoritarian governments in Jordan, Algeria and Morocco suddenly scrambled throwing rights and promises of social and economic reform to their people. The fear of those regimes was palpable. The Arab Spring felt real and like a delirious fever gripping the entire region, and much to my delight.

But the creepy, brutal quashing of the uprising in Bahrain (fully aided by Saudi tanks and military might, let us not forget) piqued me and provoked an uneasy, sickening stirring deep inside me. Then the travesty known as the Libyan 'civil war' came along, and that made it all too clear - ah yes, the manipulations and geo-political contortions of the United States and its Western-Arab puppets were well under way once more.

The invasion of a sovereign state like Libya on the pretext of 'aiding the human rights' of the civilian population, when we all knew it was all about the gooey black stuff in the ground and getting rid of a dictator who no longer served any purpose, was not only illegal under international law, but set yet another dangerous, perverse precedent in international affairs and diplomacy.

And now Syria. All the usual suspects baying that Assad simply must go, go, GO! - and it's all so utterly transparent and so utterly cynical.

Yes, we all know that Assad is a dictator and that an authoritarian regime is never benign or just. But why now? Why right now? And why not invade nearly every Gulf state if it all boils down to human rights and democracy (which we all know it doesn't)? Jesus, if there's one country that's deserving of a mega invasion to free its people from one of the most disgusting regimes on the planet, then surely it has to be the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?!

Syria would have been invaded a loooong time ago if it had more of that gooey black stuff in its ground. It doesn't, so it's been left alone. But now the United States of Pentagon and its various puppets have set their sights on taking on none other than Iran, with Israel screaming for blood like some vicious little senile bitch on the sidelines, so where to go first? Ah, of course - Iran's closest ally in the region.

Enter, Syria.

And so the charade will get more gargoylesque and more innocent blood will be shed and all for what? Just to eventually invade Iran and create even more mayhem just for the sake of the West's hyper-industrial-military complex and that most neurotic, schizophrenic nation of all, Israel?

The cancer of cynicism will just spread and spread and spread. That's all.

It's been said many, many times before throughout history, but these are troubling times indeed.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Julian On The Precipice

2012-02-02T19:03:00.001+02:00

This telling Time magazine cover from December 2010 has never been more apropos.

Julian Assange is fighting his extradition to Sweden in the Supreme Court in London as I write this - being already at the appeal phase, we all know that his chances of winning on appeal are about as good as George W. Bush suddenly becoming a pacifist and intelligent.

It just isn't going to happen. That is, Assange winning his appeal. He will be extradited to Sweden, where the Swedish authorities have already stated that they will immediately send him off to the United States to stand trial for treason.

And if he loses his treason trial in the United (Corporo-Fascist) States of America then he will be sentenced to death.

That is what fighting for the truth and seeking to unravel corruption and deception in the highest places will get a man like Assange.

That is what you get for trying to reveal the dark secrets of the super-elite and the rancid corruption of our so-called leaders.

That is what you get for living in a world run by Visa and MasterCard and Facebook and Shell and BP and the Pentagon.

My heart is very heavy at the moment. I cannot believe that I am living in a world where a man this brave and this committed to the truth is being frogmarched towards his (possible...probable?) obscene death.

I can only hope, hope, hope that Julian Assange will win his appeal and be able to fight the true fight another day.

Hope can be a very cruel jester.

Do you get my point?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Yuri Gagarin and God

2012-01-14T15:16:00.001+02:00

I heard this one yesterday during a documentary about the last few days of the famous Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin:

I don't believe in God,

I didnt' see him up there.

(Yuri Gagarin, 1934-1968)

I always knew you were a special man, Yuri.

RAVE: Americans Say Pizza is a Vegetable!

2012-01-14T15:11:00.000+02:00

In case you didn't know it, pizza is a vegetable.

I sure as hell didn't know that either. No wonder I always struggled in biology.

Yip, you read right. That ode to carbohydrate-heavy, high calorie eating fast food is, in fact, a vegetable. At least, that is according to United States legislators.

Move over you lowly celery and beetroot and lettuce, here comes the almighty PIZZA!

I heard about this funniest, most ridiculous news this morning on Russia Today - it was a report on how pizza has been declared a 'vegetable' for some time now in the United States, on the utterly spurious 'logic' that the tomato splattered on a pizza (which is from tomato concentrate anyway) thereby warrants a pizza being designated as a vegetable.

All of this has been primarily used to justify why American kids in public schools can be fed pizzas on the grounds that, being a 'vegetable', it will be nutritious and meet vegetable intake requirements mandated for kids in American public schools.

As reported at www.knowyourmeme.com:

"On November 14th, 2011, The Associated Presspublished an article about a spending bill put forth by House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee that would attempt to undermine efforts by the Obama administration to improve the nutritional value of public school lunches. The article revealed that part of the bill would protect the status of tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable.

The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department’s proposed guidelines would have attempted to prevent that. The changes had been requested by food companies that produce frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers. Some conservatives in Congress have called the push for healthier foods an overreach, saying the government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat."

It is estimated that the fast-food industry and frozen pizza-making giants like Con-Agra spent $5.6-billion lobbying Congress to ensure that their puppet whores (aka legislators) would know their place and vote to make pizza designated a vegetable.

In a supersize-obsessed country where supersize kids have exponentially grown in numbers, this is downright outrageous if it weren't so damn funny.

If I were an American parent, this would be a rant - but I'm not, so it's a rave. I know stupidly funny when I see it.

Maybe obesity is a laughing matter for American legislators after all?

As they say - only in America.

After all, they voted this one in as President for eight years:

Do you get my point?

RAVE: A Positive Anniversary - Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution

2012-01-14T14:29:00.000+02:00

As this week saw a shameful anniversary like that of Guantanamo Bay, so it too saw an anniversary to be celebrated - Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution is one-year old.

It was the genesis of a year of street protests and People Power all over the world; the very germination of what became known as the Arab Spring.

However many disappointments may have occurred in the aftermath of the Jasmine Revolution, and however many doubts may yet exist on the outcome of this Revolution, it must still remain a momentous, gigantic occasion for which Tunisians must be justifiably proud.

As with all revolutions that topple terror, greed and corruption, and free a people from that, every one of us is ultimately indebted to those who fought for those freedoms.

Do you get my point?

RANT: A Shameful Anniversary - Guantanamo

2012-01-14T14:18:00.001+02:00

This past week was the 10th anniversary of the 'detention centre' at Guantanamo Bay being operational as a key part of the United States' (futile, often heinous and too often illegal) 'war on terror.'

'Gitmo', as it has become known, is now synonymous with illegal capture, kidnap and rendition, indefinite detention without legal representation, formal charges or a trial, 'shock' techniques of torture, and too many other travesties of justice and human rights to list.

In years to come Guantanamo Bay will be known as the touchstone issue that the United States military-corporatist complex used to push the envelope of what was acceptable, even in times of war. It will be studied as that gentle push that was needed to plunge our collective psyche over the abyss into wars without end and the end of any true democracy.

Its legacy is many, many decades in the making.

Guantanamo Bay is an assault on the Geneva Conventions regarding war and the treatment of prisoners of war (even though many of the kidnapped inmates at Gitmo don't even classify as official prisoners of war according to Geneva).

It is an assault on American democracy and, more importantly, an assault on all humanity.

Shame on the United States for this shameful anniversary.

CLOSE GITMO NOW!

Do you get my point?

2012 - Looking Forward

2012-01-08T12:58:00.000+02:00

Here is a mix of things that I look forward to (or really hope happen) in 2012 (in no particular order):

* NO WAR IN IRAN!
OK, this is quite possibly my biggest wish for the world in 2012. The United States and its cohorts (lapdogs) must stop being global bully. The world simply cannot afford this war

* More of Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert weaving their magic against the financial terrorists on the Keiser Report and all over the alternative media

* Wikileaks getting back to its deserved prominence of 2010 - we need them

* Julian Assange beating his extradition to Sweden/ not being found guilty for the trumped up charges against him in that country

* The alternative media going from strength to strength

* A 'two-tier', more corporatist Internet being stopped in its tracks! NO!

* Greece declaring bankruptcy and exiting the Euro - hooray to the drachma!

* Sarkozy losing the French Presidential election - the diabolical Merkozy grip on the EU must cease

* Syria not going the way of Libya

* A weakened military and truer democracy in Egypt

* The continuation and growth of the Arab Spring

* Less madness in Iraq

* Ditto in Afghanistan

* Palestine getting more recognition by the international community

* Israel being less of the apartheid bully state it loves to be

* The continuation and growth of Occupy Wall Street and every other 'Occupy' movement around the world

* Michael Schumacher winning races again in Formula 1 and proving why he's the best ever - go Michael!

* Ferrari winning races and doing a lot better this F1 season - Forza!

* More meaningful and practical international dialogue on climate change

* Less environmental disasters, wherever and however possible

* More medical breakthroughs, especially in stem cell research

* Less conspicuous consumption, less greed - the planet can't take it (I can't take it)

* Less religious fanaticism of all stripes - religious lunacy remains one of the biggest cancers in the world

* More social and political unrest and upheaval in China - it needs it, we need it

* Less stupidity, bad grammar and bad manners, thank you very much!

Those are some of my bigger wishes for 2012.

Oh, and the American Presidential election? Who the hell cares...

Resolutions for 2012

2012-01-08T12:28:00.002+02:00

It’s a week into the new year, and only now am I committingto writing down what I wish to accomplish in 2012. It hasn’t been lethargy thathas postponed this written resolution, but rather a sense that 2012 will be arevamped and amped continuation of what I should have accomplished in 2011, ayear that flew past and in which I achieved far too little.

My few (and doable,please note) resolutions for 2011 include:

· Keep investing in my future – and I know whatthat means

· Develop, develop, develop - ditto

· Re-edit my book Victor Andrew Cake

· Stop taking things so damn seriously, especiallyat work – simply not worth it

· Stop biting my damn nails! A bad habit more than 30 years in the chewing...

· Do enough to ensure I get back to a comfortable 32inch waist – I will NOT give in to a34 inch waist, damn it!

· Eat even more vegetables and fruit than ever

· Drink less coffee, especially with milk – I dranktoo much of the damn stuff last year

Eight is a good number. That should do for now.

I must make this a good year for me.

RAVE: Work Is Evil

2011-12-30T17:28:00.003+02:00

Being on holiday does show one thing to anyone with half a brain: simply, work is bloody awful.

Never ceases to be proven, that one. Time and time again.

More reflection on that in another post, but for now I just had to share this brilliant 'equation' I came across in the blog www.anythingbuttheist.blogspot.com...

Oh yeah...

RANT: Apartheid South Africa A Mirror to Israel

2011-12-30T13:20:00.004+02:00

I'm on an anti-Israel offensive today. Just minutes after reading that the IDF launched a deadly attack on Gaza, my anger at this rogue state has just gone through the roof.

There they go again- the Big Bully Israel punching way above its weight, no doubt largely thanks to the massive support of the United States and the vociferous pro-Israel lobby in Washington D.C.

I am often amazed at how people seem so appalled when Israel is called an apartheid state. They get seduced by Israel's patina of 'democracy' (as long as you don't live in the occupied territories), the 'sophistication' of Tel Aviv (just as Johannesburg was back in the 1980s) and its (mostly) white and European-looking population. Yes, that does help in the United States and Europe.

This was South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s:

'Bantustans' ("homelands") for the 'others'
laws and regulations along racial lines
an 'enemy within' that had to be brutally contained
deep-seated paranoia
a militarized state
a much-feared secret service
death squads mandated by government to 'eliminate terrorist threats'
endless and very 'justifiable' wars/ skirmishes with or raids on neighbours
a 'beacon of hope' in a region of dictators and 'failed states'
mandatory conscription
the fervent support of Washington D.C. and many in the West
the condemnation of most of the rest of the world

That was South Africa during the height of apartheid.

Sound familiar? Hang on, doesn't this all sound very much like Israel today?! Yes, it most certainly does.

Yet calling Israel an apartheid state (which it most certainly is) is hysterically attacked as being 'anti-Semetic' (which it need not be, convenient as that attack may be). The 'anti-Jew' counter-attack by Israeli and Zionist apologists is so old, so tired and so knee-jerk, it's beyond reproach. Yawn.

No, I'm just anti-apartheid and oppression of human rights, and I don't like bullies, Israel.

This image pretty much says it all, whether one likes it or not:

Do you get my point?

RANT: Israel the New Year's Aggressor - Again

2011-12-30T12:44:00.000+02:00

It's that time of year again - it's the final days of the year, so that must mean Israel is once again thinking of going on a rampage against Gaza and the occupied territories.

After all, they did conduct a massive (and highly illegal, not to mention internationally condemned) offensive against Gaza three years ago at exactly this time of year. It was a brutal assault which killed over 1, 500 Palestinians - and four (or was it three?) Israelis.

According to Press TV on this latest Israeli assault:
"...a Tel Aviv official has again threatened to launch another war on the blockaded and impoverished territory, describing the move as “a war of necessity for Israel”. Referring to the military plan as a “swift and painful” war, chief of staff of the Israeli military, Lt. General Benny Gantz, also claimed that the measure was “not a matter of choice, but a war of necessity” for Tel Aviv."

"A war of necessity"...in what way?

The reasons given why and all the background machinations make very little difference - once again, Israel the Rogue Apartheid State will go on an illegal rampage and kill countless innocent Palestinian civilians and, if lucky for the IDF, a few Palestinian terrorists. The excuses, the reasons, the geopolitical fluff - it will all ebb away soon after the dust settles and Palestine must count its dead yet again.

According to the Irish Times:
"ISRAELI OFFICIALS are stepping up their rhetoric, warning that another invasion of Gaza is just a matter of time. Speaking as Israel launched two air strikes on militant targets in the strip, Israel’s top general, chief of staff Lieut Gen Benny Gantz, warned that cracks had emerged in Israel’s deterrence of militant groups and a second round of fighting was no longer a matter of choice for Israel. “Such a round must be initiated by Israel and must be swift and painful. I do not advise Hamas to test our mettle.”

Test your "mettle", Israel? You have no character and no moral stature as a nation, Israel, therefore how can you have "mettle" to be tested?

I'm sick to death of this rogue nation let loose in a tinderbox region, all because of the express support of the biggest bully on the block, the United States (Israel being the second-biggest bully), fired up by an all too powerful pro-Israel and Jewish lobby in Washington D.C.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Israel is nothing more than a pathetic apartheid state masquerading as a democracy and the only 'beacon of light' in a 'mad' region.

I should know - I lived in apartheid South Africa. I know all the signs, baby. And Israel has them in spades.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Arizona Anything But Humane?

2011-12-29T17:22:00.001+02:00

For a state now infamous for its draconian and, many say, downright racist anti-immigrant laws, Arizona is again in the news for all the wrong reasons. This time it has to do with a recovering heroin addict who took his little cat into the Arizona Humane Society in Phoenix to be treated, only for the little thing to be euthanized because he could not afford the $400 to have her treated...

The story from Google News/ Associated Press:

PHOENIX (AP) — Animal lovers threatened to pull donations to an animal rescue group and the public flooded the agency with scathing comments and calls after a man's cat was euthanized when he couldn't afford its medical care, prompting the Arizona Humane Society to go into damage-control mode Wednesday.

The group has hired a publicist, removed dozens of comments on its Facebook page and directed a team of five volunteers to respond to the overwhelming calls and emails it has received since The Arizona Republic published a weekend story about Daniel Dockery and his 9-month-old cat, Scruffy.

Dockery, a 49-year-old recovering heroin addict, told the Phoenix newspaper that he took Scruffy to a Humane Society center on Dec. 8 because she had a cut from a barbed-wire fence, an injury that he described as non-life-threatening. The agency said it would cost $400 to treat Scruffy, money he didn't have.

The Humane Society cited policy when it declined to accept a credit card over the phone from Dockery's mother in Michigan or to wait for her to wire the money. The staff said if he signed papers surrendering the cat, Scruffy would be treated and put in foster care, he said.

Instead, Scruffy was euthanized several hours later.

Dockery told the Republic that he was devastated.

Of course, the Arizona Human Society has gone into PR overdrive now that it has been flooded with hundreds of complaints and plenty of outrage from animal lovers.

What they did to that little cat was outrageous and unacceptable. No wonder Dockery says he is devastated.

But this is not a uniquely 'Arizona thing.' This is all too typical of so many so-called 'animal protection' societies all over the world. They claim to want to protect animals, but too often get caught up in their own dogma and over-eagerness to euthanize animals left, right and centre. They hide behind vapid, meaningless words like 'animal safety' and 'quality of life'.

Ironically, they so often do such good work, which makes their callous acts all the more unbearable and unacceptable.

Too often animal societies act like the final word, the all-knowing God-like experts, who hold sway over the lives and deaths of little innocent animals.

I'm frankly sick and tired of it.

The Arizona Human Society should be ashamed of itself. As should so many of their ilk, who play Old Testament God with the lives of animals day in and day out.

Do you get my point?

It Says It All - Occupy Wall Street

2011-12-28T20:27:00.003+02:00

I haven't commented yet on the Occupy Wall Street movement that has taken the United States by storm since September. It came slap bang in the middle of my mini-hiatus from writing in this, and also took a momentum so diverse and so unexpected that I didn't really know how to comment. Well, I did - but on so many different levels, I didn't know where to commence...

So, for now, these brilliant cartoons are what I think are the best of the wry, sardonic cartoons that have proliferated online since the Occupy movement took hold...

Possibly one of the best of the lot...

REVIEW: Looking Back At My Wishlist for 2011

2011-12-28T19:57:00.003+02:00

Back in January I made a wishlist of what I would like to have seen unfold in 2011. So, with three days to go until the end of this year, I decided to go back and comment (in red below) on how my wishes actually transpired:

********************************************************************************************************

Here is a mix of things that I look forward to in 2011 (in no particular order):

* More of Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert weaving their magic against the financial terrorists on the Keiser Report and all over the alternative media - this they continued to do in their inimitable fashion during 2011 - thank goodness. for that..in fact, I believe Max even got madder this year - only a good thing...

* Wikileaks going from strength to strength - hmmmmm, this didn't really happen. We are all the poorer for that...

* Julian Assange left in peace to do what we all need him to do Hardly - he lost his extradiction to Sweden battle, and now he is appealing that too. 2012 could be very bad for him indeed...

* The alternative media going from strength to strength - a mixed bag judging by the successes of People Power in 2011, as well as the continued suppression of alternative media in many quarters...

* A 'two-tier', more corporatist Internet being stopped in its tracks - a usurped, corporatist and less free Internet is still (shockingly) very much on the back burner (perhaps pipeline?)...

* The Euro possibly collapsing - or at least countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Belgium going back to their former currencies - hurrah to the drachma, escudo, punt and Belgian franc! This didn't happen in 2011 - what a pity. Quelle damage!

* The slowdown or even demise of the too-powerful and destructive Germany-France axis in the EU (Merkel and Sarkozy should get a room and leave Europe in peace) - as if. Merkozy just got stronger and more Macchiavelian in 2011. Their demise cannot come soon enough...

* The cringe-worthy 'Tea Party' crowd in Washington D. C. being shown up for the showboating, embarrassing rightwing nut jobs that we all know they are - interestingly, this did come to pass in more ways than one. Most gratifying...

* Sarah Palin having less power and shutting that big, worthless poodle mouth of hers - thank goodness, this too came to pass. There must be a God after all, Sarah...

* Michael Schumacher winning races again in Formula 1 and proving why he's the best ever - go Michael! Unfortunately, this did not happen in the 2011 season. Go Michael!

* Less environmental disasters, wherever and however possible - again, as if. Fukushima, anyone?

* More medical breakthroughs, especially in stem cell research - not entirely sure on this score, but quite sure there wouldv'e been some amazing breakthroughs this year...

* Less conspicuous consumption, less greed - the planet can't take it (I can't take it) At least people spoke more about greed in 2011 - and even demonstrated against it in many cities around the world...

* More sanity in business, finance and the global financial markets - yeah, Vittorio, fat chance. The pillaging and financial rape by financial terrorists continued unabated this year...

* Less religious fanaticism of all stripes - religious lunacy remains one of the biggest cancers in the world - hardly. This is like wishing for peace in the Middle East - almost impossible to ever happen. A string of bombs against Christians in northern Nigeria, including at a Catholic Church, by Muslim extremists on Christmas Day speaks volumes about religion and peace in the world...

* More social and political unrest and upheaval in China - it needs it, we need it - it happened to some extent, but nowhere as prolific or as damaging to China as I had wished...

* Less stupidity, bad grammar and bad manners, thank you very much! Next...

RAVE: A Quote for the Ages - Zhou Enlai

2011-12-27T10:50:00.001+02:00

On a secret visit to China in 1971, Henry Kissinger asked his Chinese counterpart, Zhou Enlai, what his opinion was on the outcome of the French Revolution. To which Enlai responded:

"It is too early to say"

Brilliant.

How prescient are those words in this age of endless babble that too often amount to little more than empty sound bites.

Sometimes the simplest answer is the most complex and erudite.

Do you get my point?

RANT: I Don't Know How She Does It Either

2011-12-27T10:36:00.001+02:00

Sarah Jessica Parker - an amiable, passable actress who has made herself a fortune playing 'beautiful, desired women', when she is anything but. And she's a fashion icon to boot.

I enjoyed "Sex in the City" as much as many others, but this is one damn overrated and limited actress. Yet she keeps churning them out.

Yet another example of how the Hollywood schleb machine can make a superstar out of anyone.

I don't know how she does it either.

RANT: The Semantics of American War

2011-12-26T17:49:00.000+02:00

A few days ago I happened to see a byline scrolling at the bottom of the screen that irked me to hell and back. It was in the immediate aftermath of the American 'withdrawal' from Iraq that recently took place. It was on CNN, I do believe, and stated:

"Iraqis now no better off than they were under Saddam..."

Excuse me, correction if you please. It really should have read:

"Iraqis now worse off than they were under Saddam..."

Tyrant though he may have been (albeit a very convenient one for Western powers when it so suited them..), at least under Saddam the Iraqi people were the best educated in the Arab world, and amongst the best universities, hospitals and infrastructure in the Middle East. At least Baghdad was intact and considered one of the cleanest and most beautiful cities in region.

But all of that is very unimportant of course when the Iraqis now enjoy 'freedon and democracy', American style, not to mention being on the brink of civil war and Baghdad being this decade's equivalent of what Beirut was in the '70s and '80s.

Yes, this invasion was really worth it.

Well done, America, and your 'Coalition of the Willing'. A job very well done.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: 100% Made In Italy

2011-12-26T13:14:00.001+02:00

I may be 41 years of age, but I continue to be spoiled each and every Christmas by my terrific mom. This year was no different. She outdid herself yet again, bless her generous soul.

Undoubtedly, my favourite present this year was a Race Transporter Set made by Italian miniature carmakers, Brumm. This particular one is an exact replica of the Ferraris driven by Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi at the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix, replete with figurines of the two legendary drivers, as well as the Fiat eight-wheeler transporter truck (as shown above from the Brumm site). Just beautiful.

My mother knows what a fervent Ferrari supporter I am (a demented tifoso since 1977 to be exact), so she couldn't resist buying it for me, she said.

A snobbery for quality is a family trait, so the fact that this set is a collector's item with only 500 having been made (mine being #107 of 500, by the way) and the only one of its kind being sold in South Africa no doubt swayed her quite immensely.

But what was the deciding factor that made her decide to buy it on the spot? It was a snob issue, but wasn't about being a limited edition or the only one being sold in this country. According to her, what sold this set for her was the fact that it was 100% Made in Italy.

100% Made in Italy.

Not only 'Made' in Italy', but 100% so. For those of us sick to death of the sub-standard, utterly poor craftsmanship of 'Made in China' that pervades the world of consumer goods today, and where a car has some parts made in China, others made in Vietnam and others still made in Mexico, one despairs at how everything for the middle class has become so shoddy and so devoid of quality.

I still remember a time when 'Made in Italy' or 'Made in France' was more than enough, but that is no longer the case.

After all, was it really all 'made in Italy' or 'made in France', or only parts thereof? Or, worse still, just the design concept thought up in Italy or France, with the actual manufacture made in some poxy developing country, with the attention not being to details like craftsmanship or quality, but to the cold, hard bottom line?

That is why today ONLY '100% Made in Italy' will ensure that a middle-class lady who knows and appreciates quality will pay that extra so she can buy her overgrown baby of a son a limited edition Ferrari set.

That is what 'Made in Italy' used to represent and should represent.

Once again, I hanker for a time gone by when quality and attention to detail and things that lasted (and that weren't only meant for the super rich) actually meant something. This Christmas my mother and I were able to enjoy that feeling once again, if only through a miniature replica of the 1981 Ferrari F1 team.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: 10 Reasons Why I Love Christmas

2011-12-26T12:39:00.000+02:00

It's the day after Christmas, and I'm still reveling in how much I love this particular day of the year. Not withstanding my birthday (THE most important day of my year, it goes without saying), there is no other day of the year that I look more forward to than December 25th.

And this from a self-avowed agnostic (make that an atheist who would like to think 'there's something out there' but very much doubts it).

A child of God born to a virgin in a stable in Bethlehem and visited by three Kings from the Orient whilst a big star blazed in the low horizon? Makes perfect sense.

I wasn't buying the stories of the Old Testament (all horror, pillage, rape and countless people begat) nor those of the New Testament (one too many miracles) at already the tender age of 8. Scripture classes made for terrific listening, but it all seemed so unreal to me. Great drama, no doubt, but all frankly nonsense. Never bought it - and I still don't.

But Christmas has become about as secular as Valentine's Day, and I can understand how more orthodox Christians and true believers of what's scribbled in the Bible must hate this. Understand, but don't give a damn. After all, Christians had their time - for many centuries, the Inquisition included - now it's ours. And that includes reveling in the rollicking, consumerist kitschfest that Christmas is today.

Ten reasons why I love Christmas so much?

Christmas Presents: Much as I deplore the consumerism that engulfs society for the rest of the year, on this day I am an uber-consumerist-nihilist. I LOVE getting presents - and giving them too. I'll take them all, thank you very much
Christmas Morning: Is there any feeling better than waking up early on Christmas morning, knowing that presents await one under a tree? I feel very sorry for those who open their presents on Christmas Eve - what to do the next morning?! I think not...
The Christmas Tree: The one time one can decorate to one's gaudiest, kitschiest heart's content and still feel very, very proud of the outcome
Christmas Lights: white, multi-coloured, many, few - I love them all. What creates the mood better than all those twinkling lights?
Christmas Lunch: I mean the pecuniary delights of traditional Portuguese and Italian Christmas food - panettone, bacalhau, zabiglione - not the bland, horrendous fare of the Anglo-Saxons. Bless them with their overcooked turkeys and caramelised vegetables. If even Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver can't make English Christmas food look good, then who the hell can?
Christmas Music: The most sappy, annoying and nauseating music ever written and sung suddenly becomes so cheerful and apt and sets the mood for a season (caveat: except the muzak type that assails one in department stores and supermarkets - that stuff is annoying beyond belief)
A Time to be Corny: No other time of the year gives one as much carte blanche to immerse oneself in total cornydom as does Christmas
A Time to be Kitsch: See 1, 3 and 4 above - and hurrah for that.
A Time to Enjoy being Spoilt and Spoiling Others: Any why not?
A Time to be a Child Again: Well, stuff it, at least it is for me...

RAVE: Save The Euro - NOT!

2011-12-21T17:55:00.003+02:00

This cartoon is simply priceless - and says it all...

RAVE: More Merkozy Images to Savour

2011-12-21T17:53:00.001+02:00

I hate them so much, that finding delectable images that lampoon Merkozy is one of my favourite Internet pasttimes at the moment.

For the prosecution...

RANT: Merkozy - The Scourge of Europe

2011-12-21T17:48:00.000+02:00

For all the many tyrants and shysters that have flooded the news in 2011, very few have made me as angry, even outraged, as have the sickening little Franco-German couple disparagingly known as Merkozy.

Merkel of Germany and Sarkozy of France are so despicable in their quest to ensure Franco-German hegeomony in Europe, they even make a weasel like Cameron of the UK look quite good.

Their cosy, even incestuous little relationship has so epitomized what is rotten to the core today in the EU and Eurozone, that they only serve as hideous cariciatures...

Which is exactly why I wish to reproduce these images below:

Humour aside, there are serious issues at stake with regard to the Eurozone and the very future of the EU, and to have these Bruti at the helm of Europe going into 2012 is both disconcerting and very dangerous.

She fights for what every German leader secretly orgasms over - ruling the whole of Europe, whilst he fights for what every French leader secretly orgasms over - salvaging France from total obscurity.

My wish is that at least one of this malevolent duo disappears in 2012 - with Sarkozy hopefully losing the French Presidential election or Merkel getting decapitated in a freak accident whilst haranguing the European Parliament. Either will do.

Herve and Gretel need to disappear into the political woods ASAP.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Shysters of the Year 2011

2011-12-21T14:54:00.002+02:00

Where does one begin? Here are just a few…in no particular order...

All financial types: it may seem unfair to lump investmentbankers, traders, currency speculators, hedge fund managers and just about every other financialschmuck all together into one pile of stinking manure but, frankly, don’t they richlydeserve it?

Goldman Sachs: As above, but these shysters are the posterboys of why bankers today are nothing more than financial terrorists.

Merkozy: Merkel of Germany and Sarkozy of France were oneand the same in 2011 – so cosy and intertwined in their Machiavellian hijackingof the Eurozone and EU it was positively incestuous – and sickening to watch.

The euro: The Eurozone was shown up for all its many flaws and many malignancies in 2011. It has allowed for the economic (and pending social) destruction of great countries like Portugal, Greece, Ireland and even Italy, and deserves to be put down - or at least decimated. Bring back the escudo, the drachma, the punt, the lira - now!

Obama: Talk about the biggest letdown in recent US politicalhistory. Well, for many others – I had very few illusions about this one fromthe beginning. But 2011 just proved how weak and how much of a Washington insider this man really is. Change indeed.

The American military-secrecy-corporate complex: Thehorrific mess of Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan. Meddling in countless other ‘conflicts.’American politicians bought to the hilt. More oil needed – ah, let’s invadeIran. Madness, greed and hubris rolled into one – to all our detriment.

Mubarak: Egypt may still be in turmoil and Islamists growingin stature in that country (never a good thing), but the toppling of thisdictator and his brutal regime can only be a good thing – not to mentionstunning to watch as it unfolded in early 2011.

Gaddafi: As cynical as his overthrow was, and as unpardonableas his capture and barbaric murder was, not to mention a total perversion ofinternational law, this brutal, self-aggrandizing man cannot be missed.However, the void now left in Libya can only be described as very, very scary.

Israel: As long as it remains a racist, apartheid state,then his one’s a given. Year in and year out.

Japan: For continuing to be the master manipulator in the horrific slaughter of the mighty whale, not to mention the farcical, scary debacle that was Fukushima this year, Japan deserves a mention. For all that it has and all that it can do, this nation really should be doing so much better.

China: For standing by and whistling away whilst the Western world went into economic meltdown. For its cynical self-interest which makes the self-interest of other countries pale by comparison. For continuing to give us crappy, badly made consumer goods, whilst local industries continue to collapse in many countries. For continuing to be the biggest threat on the horizon.

Canada: It may seem very unfair to pick on just one nationfor the breakdown (which it was, let’s face it) of real progress in 2011 withregard to climate change and the Kyoto Protocol. After all, the United Statesis arguably even a worse culprit, right? Yes, but one expects that from thebully on the block, not Canada ‘the good and the fair’. Whether its defiant,irrational stance on climate change, tar sands, seal culling or the wholesaledecimation of its boreal forests, Canada has become the biggest environmental hypocriteon the block. And that makes it worse than even a bully.

There are many, many others. The list is too long and too exhausting.

So many shysters on such a small planet with so much to offer us all. Do you get my point?

RAVE: This TIME They Got It Right

2011-12-21T14:35:00.000+02:00

Time Magazine is not what it used to be. Once it was anews-breaking, world-renowned news magazine that often broke and set the toneof international news. Now it is nothing more than bitsy, crass reporting, yetanother reflection of the slow, excruciating demise of meaningful journalism.Time became purveyor of the superficial, soundbite drivel that masquerades asjournalism today.

The lowest common denominator pandered to yet again in anera of dumbed down, inattentive and commercial banality.

And very often Time would get their Man or Person of theYear very, very wrong. Rudy Giuliani or Mark Zuckerberg, anyone? Uh huh…

However, this year Time Magazine got it very, very right.

Their Person of the Year for 2011 was not a famous man orwoman or any of the other, usual and ‘famous’ suspects. Instead, it was theman, the woman, the very person that came to epitomise 2011, and deserve allthe kudos. Their Person of the Year was the very embodiment of an exciting,historic and, yes, watershed year – it was The Protester.

The Protester in Tunis, Cairo, Sana’a, Bahrain, Homs, Amman,Benghazi, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, London, Paris, Minsk, New York, Oakland,Portland, Los Angeles, Rome, and everywhere else this year was the collectiveawakening of those ordinary people sick to death of the corruption, the greed,the power elites that are robbing our very future and our very humanity.

The Protester is everyone of us who has had enough andknows that the system, wherever and whatever that ‘system’ might be, is rottento the very core.

Well done, Time Magazine. At least this time you got it right.

MAN OF THE YEAR 2011: Mohamed Bouazizi

2011-12-21T04:10:00.001+02:00

My chosen Man of the Year for 2011 is a man who died on only the fourth day of this year. He was not a famous man. He was not a man of any great consequence, so to speak. He led an unremarkable, ordinary life in the small North African country of Tunisia.

He was a simple fruit seller.

Yet, after years of petty harassment and abuse at the hands of authorities in the small town of Sidi Bouzid, and at his wits end, he had finally had enough. So it was that on December 17th 2010, after having his plight ignored by the local governor, this man stood in the middle of traffic and set fire to himself in protest against the corruption and abuse of power he could no longer tolerate.

His words shouted out as he set fire to himself? "How do you expect me to make a living?"

This man was Mohamed Bouazizi.

He was just 26 years of age.

His act of desperate defiance became an instant cause celebre in Tunisia, and he remained in a coma for 18 days until his death on January 4th 2011.

More than 5000 people attended his funeral and many were heard shouting out that his death would be avenged and never be forgotten...

That would be putting it mildly.

Within days after his death, a welling up of public outrage and disgust against the despised regime of President Ben-Ali erupted in the streets of Tunisia, and within weeks one of the longest-running and most brutal dictatorships in the Arab world collapsed...no, to be more precise, it was toppled; topped by sheer People Power.

What happened in Tunisia in the early weeks of 2011 stunned the entire world.

And so the Arab Spring was born.

It was a veritable house of cards that fell in one of the most repressed and undemocratic regions in the world:

Egypt - the overwhelming, joyous overthrow of the most reviled and powerful of them all, Hosni Mubarak
Yemen - which will yet fall
Syria - on the brink
Libya - Qaddafi was goodriddance, even if his ouster by being murdered was barbaric and if for mostly wrong and no doubt the most cynical reasons
Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, even the UAE - dictatorships all, and all very, very, very worried
Saudi Arabia - can we hope?

And so the Arab Spring continues. It continues to galvanize not only the Arab world but similar people revolts all over the world - the Occupy Wall Street movement of New York, Portland, Oakland and numerous other US cities and cities worldwide, the sit-ins of Madrid, Barcelona, London and Rome, the rage of Athens - it goes on and on and on.

A groundswell of outrage by ordinary people all over the world, sick and tired of the lies and manipulation and outright obscene greed of the super rich and their corporate-politico puppets. A rage that marks 2011 as a watershed year for humanity, much as were 1789 or 1848 or 1968 or 1989...

And all because one man decided he could take the abuse of power no more, and whose desperate act of defiance is a mirror to all of us who have simply had enough.

For all those reasons, and many, many more, I do not hesitate in making Mohamed Bouazizi my Man of the Year for 2011.

He is a our everyman, a martyr for humanity.

WORD OF THE YEAR: Kakistocracy

2011-12-21T03:25:00.002+02:00

Today I heard what has to be my 'Word of the Year' for 2011:

KAKISTOCRACY

And cited by no other than the inimitable and simply brilliant Max Keiser, whose show The Keiser Report on Russia Today I continue to watch as often as possible.

K-A-K-I-S-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y

And I thought he said 'cacastocracy', believing it to be his play on the word 'aristocracy' and the word 'caca' which, well, we all know means shit, shite, crap...call it what you will. I thought it was his take on the shitty power financial-military-corporate elites that currently rule (and destroy) the world. That sure made me laugh out loud.

But, much to my surprise, it is an actual word, the meaning of which is:

(kăk'ĭ-stŏk'rə-sē, kä'kĭ-)
n., pl., -cies.
Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

[Greek kakistos, worst, superlative of kakos, bad; see caco- + -CRACY.]

What a word that so eloquently and precisely conjures up these morally corrupt and filthy elites that continue to hold sway in this increasingly mad and unjust world.

This priceless word is the living epitome of what 2011 became and for which it will go down in years to come - as the watershed year in which the working and middle classes all over the world finally woke up and realized that the rich and the powerful most certainly do NOT have our interests at hand, never mind at heart...

So, once again, I must tip my hat to the brilliant Mr. Keiser. He has done it again.

Or maybe it should be cacastocracy after all...?

Do you get my point?

RANT: Sacre Bleu, M. Spielberg!

2011-12-21T02:59:00.000+02:00

Over two months since my last post and what finally gets me irked enough to write my first post in such a long time?

Occupy Wall Street? No
The inevitable invasion of Iran? No
The ongoing fight for freedom in Egypt? No
Rising tensions in Syria? No
The never ending Eurozone debacle? No

No, none of the above. What got me into a frenzy was nothing less than a little cartoon character created by a Belgian and by the name of Tintin.

Or, rather, the hacking and hashing of a world-renowned and much-beloved character by Hollywood - yes, the cultural whoremeisters and moneyed scheisters of LA are at it again.

IS NOTHING SACRED IN/ BY/ FOR HOLLYWOOD?!

And this time the whoremeister is no other than Mr Steven Spielberg...

Ahem, Mr. Spielberg, THIS is Tintin...

An urbane, inquisitive and totally lovable journalist, the epitome of a kinder, more polite and frankly better time, and who happens to have one rollicking (read: NOT explosive or demented or OTT) adventure after another.

What Tintin is most decidedly NOT is THIS, Mr. Spielberg...

What is Spielberg's vision of Tintin? Yet another tedious, swashbuckling Indian Jones rehash that endures more explosions than the London Blitz and pulls off daredevil stunts that would have made Evil Knievel blush like a girl, Now, a la Spielberg, he is the epitome of our garish, pumped up times..NOT!

I cannot remember the last time a movie trailer horrified and appalled and angered me so much...

You may have given us classics like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., but with this pimping of my beloved Tintin you show yourself up as nothing more than the sum total of how hackneyed and schlocky Hollywood has truly become, Mr. Spielberg...

And don't get me started on Captain Haddock...

Shame on you. Please forgive him, Monsieur Herge.

RIP: Marco Simoncelli

2011-10-23T20:41:00.001+02:00

I've been a Formula 1 fan since I was a young boy. Unlike many other motor racing fans, however, I just never got into the two-wheel variation. I found motorbikes boring - the technology and racing itself not doing it for me on any level. Others raved about it, I remained untouched.

Until this year. I found myself flicking through some the sports channels one Sunday back in May and, suddenly, I found myself completely ernthralled by a MotoGP race. The wheel-to-wheel racing,the sheer gutsiness of the dimunitive motorbike riders, the back and forth place-swapping - just amazing!

I'd be lying if I said I'd become a huge fan of MotoGP since then - watched a few races, found some of them great, others of them quite dull, and, to be honest, also turned off a bit by the fact that the 2011 championship was being headed by racers that didn't catch my fancy (Stoner, Lorenzo, et al) and Valentino Rossi almost always mid-field due to his slower Ducati.

Be that as it may, one guy really caught my eye from the word go. Quick as lightning, incredibly audacious on the track and more often than not crashing out after one impetuous move or another. The fact that he was a total dude who happened to sport a mop of orange Rasta-like hair and happened to be Italian just made me like him even more. I really like Valentino Rossi, of course, but this ultra-fast audacious young upstart really got me excited. His name was Marco Simoncelli.

Today Simoncelli tragically passed away after a terrible crash on the 2nd lap of the Malaysian GP at Sepang. I now wish I'd watched more of him and been able to savour more of a tremendous rider who now, all too unbelievably, is no more.

If you love motorsport, there are drivers and riders you know are great but just can't like, other drivers you like but you know will never be great, and then there are those that stand head and shoulders above the rest for you. They are the ones, the very few, who really make the sport that much more thrilling, that much more alive. You watch their every move in every race, and every triumph they have is your triumph, every failure they have is yours to endure. Michael Schumacher is that man for me in F1. Marco Simoncelli would've been that man in MotoGP.

Like so many others around the world, I feel robbed of a great talent, robbed of a really simpatico guy - a real dude - who always readily smiled and waved at the camera.

Arrivederci, Marco - risposare in pace.

It Says It All...China Trumps America

2011-08-31T23:26:00.000+02:00

I just wrote a rather biting post about the irony of a crippled America ravaged by its very own neoconservative, 'free' market dogma. I think I proved my point...

And then I came across this brilliant cartoon that so blithely illustrates just how much the US of A has allowed itself to be screwed most royally by that Empire-in-the-Making, the People's Republic of China...

It really does say it all...

RAVE: Chopsticks Made in America!

2011-08-31T23:19:00.002+02:00

I came across such an interesting little article a few days ago. Simply: it detailed 10 products still made in the United States of America. The link: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-American-Industries-Still-minyanville-2666915551.html

For a country in such interminable industrial and manufacturing decline, not to mention teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, it was a very sobering read.

A once great nation built on an economy that made things, all types of things, and was damn proud of that too - well, how very little it has to show for itself today. The list of '10 Products Made in America' is depressing - socks, sparklers, compact discs, ironing boards and pencils - yip, American industry has much to be proud of.

Well, I have to admit - I actually found myself laughing. Laughing quite loudly in that knowing, Machiavellian way of someone proven right, if I may say so myself.

Oh, America! You, the country that foisted the dogma of 'free trade' and globalization and cheap labour upon the rest of us like some cheap, tacky religion, are now yourself living proof of why what you preached was so pathetic, so hollow, so self-serving and, ultimately, your own economic harakiri.

My personal favourite? The fact that the biggest maker of chopsticks in the world today is...yip, an American company! It's biggest market? China, of course.

The irony is so rich, it's almost unreal...

You had it coming to you, America, I'm sorry to say. And what a pity that is.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Thank You, Jane

2011-08-31T22:51:00.000+02:00

I recently had one of the biggest pleasures of my life to date: I got the opportunity to see Jane Goodall speak in person.

Well, to be very honest, it was already a few weeks back that I had the honour and the privilege to sit and listen to this remarkable lady, as she wooed an audience of a few hundred at a Dinner with Jane, the wondrous Champion of the Chimpanzee, at the Sandton Sun here in Johannesburg.

Yes, it was already a few weeks ago now. I confess. That is how long it has taken me to process just what an effect this small lady of 77 years of age had on me that night.

I was struck by so many things that night:

Her soft-spoken, lilting voice, that held an entire audience in the palm of her hand
Her humour, her grace, her insight
Her astounding, simple wisdom
Chimpanzees at Gombe her life, and now still tirelessly travelling the world with new projects of hope
A wonderful project called Roots & Shoots that trusts in the best - the young
Her commitment, which is total, and continues unwavering
Her belief in nature, the environment, the youth, the human spirit, in us

It was a defining moment in my life. That much I know. She made me reflect a lot on what she has accomplished, and how little I have in comparison. I wasn't crushed by that nor did it sadden me. It was a simple realization about too many compromises made that I can only hope will embolden me in time to come.

And that was the least of it, if that can be understood.

It was very humbling. And very, very inspiring.

I was profoundly moved by Miss Goodall. And I shall be forever grateful for that.

Thank you so very much, Jane.

RANT: Unemployed Need Not Apply

2011-08-31T22:27:00.000+02:00

More than a month has passed since my last post. The month of August has passed in a flash, with more than enough news and tidbits to pique my interest and (for the most part) scandalize or upset me no end...

My inertia can only be put down to a hibernation borne by a particularly long and often quite cold winter (well, at least by southern African standards)...

That, and being a lazy bastard with my writing.

Some news stuck with me, however. A headline discussed on RT and the Keiser Report earlier this month still continues to play on my mind and irk me like few headlines have done this year. It's a byline that has reportedly become quite common in job postings in the recession-ravaged USA and shows to what putrid lows casino capitalism has sunk:

Unemployed Need Not Apply

Uh huh. And how exactly are people who are unemployed supposed to ever get their lives back on track if their current reality is a de facto disqualification from even applying for a job?!

Unbelievable. Incredulous, angered...and even a little stunned is how I felt knowing that this is how bad an economic downturn can get. And how capitalism (or what's left of it today) can 'justify' its actions.

The various machinations of just how bad, how VERY BAD this little paradigm shift in corporate oxymoronic thinking really is boggled my mind then. And continue to boggle my mind all these weeks later.

Do you get my point?

RANT: News Corp Sinks Even Lower

2011-07-23T18:04:00.001+02:00

This is what one of News Corp's 'finer' newspapers, The Times of London, printed today as its editorial cartoon:

As if the wretched global behemoth that is News Corp hadn't done enough already to show us what a perverse organisation it is with the ongoing phone hacking scandal in the UK...

Now this?!

Any editor that sees fit to print a cartoon as unbelievably sick and in bad taste as this can only do so when part of an organisation that is endemically and fundamentally putrid and devoid of ethics.

The neoconservative, corporatist Master of the Universe that is Rupert Murdoch and his legions of lackeys in his media empire (of evil) do it again.

Do these media types have no shame?

Amoral scheisters - him and the whole bunch of them.

Do you get my point?

IN MEMORIUM: Norway's Day of Horror

2011-07-23T13:18:00.001+02:00

Yesterday the proud, open nation of Norway was ripped apart by a bomb in the middle of Oslo and, even more horrifically, if that's at all possible, a gunman dressed as a policeman opened fire on those gathered at a youth festival on an island. Today the death toll stands at 91, of which 84 are said to have been those on the island.

How will Norway ever be the same again?

Yet again, I am at a loss for words at the decay of humanity in this world.

RAVE: Got to Love Those Belgians

2011-07-12T16:43:00.003+02:00

I always knew I had a soft spot for Belgium.

Belgium has been without an official government at the federal level since June 2010. In doing so, the country is breaking records as the democracy for the longest time ever without an actual government.

And as of today that record keeps running and being broken.

According to an online article today from the UK's Telegraph correspondent in Brussels, "Belgium has been without an elected government for over a year after deep divisions between Flemish and Walloon, French speaking, political parties have led to history's longest political impasse in a democracy. Elections last June deepened the crisis after a majority of voters in Flanders, the richer Dutch-speaking north of Belgium, supported the separatist New Flemish Alliance (NVA), which supports the break-up of the Belgian state. Negotiations to form a new Belgian government have dragged on for over a year as Belgium's francophone Walloon minority have refused to give Flemish separatists new powers to control taxes and to run its own economy."

Yesterday was also the day when the Dutch-speaking Flemish majority celebrate what some Flemish politicians call the "Flemish national day", much to the chagrin and outright umbrage of the French-speaking Walloons.

The latest effort to broker an agreement between the discordant linguistic factions collapsed this past Friday, as the mediator asked King Albert II to be relieved of the duty. That's a full 13 months after the contentious federal elections were held in the beleaguered country.

The country is not without other problems: financially it's in a mess. Yet another victim of the ongoing saga that is the eurozone crisis, Belgium currently has a public debt burden of about 96% of GDP. That's pretty damn close to the enormous public debt burdens that have plagued countries like Greece and Italy. Yet, much to its credit, it somehow continues to have one of the highest standards of living in the world.

What I also admire is the sheer irreverence with which many Belgians seem to be taking their political debacle, which is making them record breakers for a deadlock many other countries would find mortifying in the extreme. It must have something to do with the inimitable and uniquely Belgian spirit, as stated in an online article from the China Post back in February: "Beyond optimism, Belgians have also made it a moral duty to make fun of themselves." “We never take ourselves seriously. We are the country of the Smurfs, of Tintin, of Rene Magritte and surrealism. So it is a country that, compared with England or France, we dare to make fun of ourselves [my emphasis],” said Brussels politician Luckas Vander Taelen.

That's my kind of country and exactly what politics deserves in this day and age, to be perfectly honest.

I'm sure many Belgians are sick and tired by now of the ongoing impasse, and the divisions in the country go back many years. But I do still get a kick out of all of this

Very tellingly, the country ticks along, even as it fails to have a proper central government in place.

Interesting that, is it not? Hmmmmmmm...

Do you get my point?

RANT: E Doppo...Italia

2011-07-12T16:42:00.001+02:00

And next it's Italy, as my title in Italian says.

Forget Greece - at least for a nanosecond. Now all the talk on the Internet news wires is that it's increasingly looking like Italy may too enter into its own debt crisis. And Italy in trouble will make the debt crises of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and even Spain look like a financial walk in the park.

According to Reuters today:

"The main measure of Italy's borrowing costs broke above 6 percent for the first time in 14 years before easing back on Tuesday as the euro zone's third largest economy [my emphasis] was sucked into the bloc's debt crisis. Italian 10-year yields at one stage soared more than 30 basis points on the day to leap above 6 percent -- the highest since 1997 -- getting closer to the 7 percent level most market players see as being unsustainable for Italy's borrowing costs given its huge debt pile."

"Italy is by far the country with the greatest sensitivity to rising debt servicing costs and particularly in terms of rolling over debt. This is not a situation it can afford to have going on for any sustained period of time," said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London."

Yikes. That's bad, whichever way you slice it.

Reuters continues by adding that, "Italy has one of the world's highest levels of public debt. At around 120 percent of gross domestic product, it is second only to Greece in the euro zone. A total of 176 billion euros ($250 billion) in Italian government paper will come due by the end of the year."

There are signs that the Italian government has been able to steady today the creaking ship that is the Italian bond market - and one simply has to believe that one of the biggest economies in the world will be able to pull through this...

Surely, right?

However Italy is able to pull through this latest debt crisis, it no doubt shows that financial contagion is a speedy, scary and downright unpredictable bastard.

And do we need any more evidence that the euro project is, for all intents and purposes, a failed project?

Do you get my point?

RANT: Greece Set To Default

2011-07-12T16:41:00.000+02:00

Greece is on the verge of defaulting on its massive debt.

(Cartoon courtesy of teamofmonkeys.com)

According to the Guardian online newspaper: "European leaders bowed to the inevitable and conceded that Greece is likely to default on its massive debt burden, which would be a first among the 17 countries using the euro."

A first to default, yes, but will it be the last? It hardly bears thinking...
The article continues: "As recently as last week, eurozone ministers stressed the need to avoid default in Greece, indicating the rapid shifts under way in an escalating crisis."
When the perceived issues with regard to the debt of a sovereign nation change on an almost day to day basis...well, then one must know that there is some SERIOUS trouble going on.

This is bad - really, really BAD.

The Guardian continues: "Accepting that a Greek default was now impossible to avoid, EU governments are hoping it will be brief and "selective", not triggering a "credit event" on the financial markets that could wreak havoc on the credit default swap markets, also in the US, and unleash contagion."

"Brief"? How will that ever be possible with all the crippling cuts to public spending that have been imposed on an ailing Greece? And "selective" to whom? Or rather, for the benefit of whom?

As Greece teeters (and I mean REALLY teeters) on the brink, one must ask: why did it all come to this? Was this fiasco really necessary?

And why now the sudden (desperate? pre-planned?) pledges by the EU powers-that-be to force private investors holding Greek debt to take a 'haircut' and alleviate Greece's debt burden and other concessions that, SURELY, could have been demanded much sooner than now, this late in the damn game?

Or was it all on purpose? The selling off of Greece at fire sale prices to foreign scavengers? The pre-meditated neo-liberal economic hacking of every social program and social welfare 'luxury' afforded to Greek citizens for the good of American and European (mostly German and French) banks and other speculators?

Now that would make a lot of sense...

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Ferrari Slays The Bulls & Poms in Britain

2011-07-12T14:24:00.004+02:00

It already happened two days ago, but I'm still enjoying the fact that Ferrari's Fernando Alonso won this year's British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

And what is so great for me as a tifoso is that he did it in such emphatic style. To win on a circuit supposed to be heavily suited to the Red Bull cars and do so by 16.6 seconds on the last lap is no mean feat. And Alonso set the fastest lap of the Grand Prix, with his teammate Felipe Massa as second-fastest on the day.

This year's title remains undeniably Sebastian Vettel's to lose, so huge is his lead in the Driver's Championship, but it was still a magnificent day for the scarlet cars.

It was almost as delightful watching other teams stuff up their pitstops for once! As any Ferrari fan knows (and has suffered), the Scuderia have made some ghastly mistakes in the pits in recent years. So it was positively fabulous to see the seemingly invincible Red Bull team make a balls-up of Sebastian Vettel's second pit stop.

Even more satisfying was watching the team I hate most in Formula 1, namely the McCheaters... ahem... McLaren, releasing Jenson Button without his front right tyre securely fastened, theerby stuffing up the Brit's race. Glorious stuff.

A Spaniard driving for the all-Italian team I have supported since 1977 at the British Grand Prix, the 'spiritual' home of British motor racing for British drivers and most of the teams in F1, it's... SUPERB.

Ah, the simple pleasures in life ;-)

RAVE: It Says It All - Arab Spring 'Eggs'

2011-07-12T13:25:00.001+02:00

This cartoon I came across today really says it all:

It's brilliant.

The Arab Spring does seem to continue unabated as summer unfolds in the Maghreb and Middle East:

Tunisia: The proud birthplace of this 'Spring' continues to have its issues as its people try to reach their objectives against a stubborn ruling class. Power to the People.

Egypt: Mubarak was justly booted out - but now the people are back in the streets and in the iconic Tahrir Square demanding the Army follow through on its reform promises. As they rightly should demand. Power to the People.

Bahrain: The Saudis had to be called in to bail out the ruler, in what was a shocking display of authoritarian muscle-flexing. But the people have won some concessions for now. Power to the People.

Yemen: A total mess for now, it must be said, but the 20-odd years regime was shook to the core and reforms are still on the cards in this poorest of Arab countries. Power to the People.

The other two remaing eggs yet to be fully broken:

Libya: The most 'testy' egg of all. Yes, the current conflict to 'aid the rebels' against Gaddafi may indeed be very cynical on the part of the United States, EU and Nato. Libya's oil reserves no doubt are key to all of their 'help'. But, nevertheless, Gaddafi's days do appear to be numbered and there is no denying that the Arab Spring 'flu' caught on here, regardless of geopolitics. Power to the People.

Syria: This egg needs to be broken. Assad, for all his preachings of being a 'reformer', has been brutal in his suppression of protests and killed hundreds of his people in the process. He is no democrat and it seems the bastard needs to go. I hope the Syrians are up for it. Power to the People.

The Moroccan king has been smart (not to mention scared?) enough to hastily call for reforms in order to ensure national unity, as did the government of Algeria to a lesser extent...for now. I have no doubt that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and even Iran continue to watch this Spring very nervously.

As ever, power to the peoples of the Arab Maghreb and Middle East. May their Spring continue, with all its many challenges and complexities.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: It Says It All - Israeli Paranoia

2011-07-12T13:25:00.000+02:00

This cartoon says it all:

It may be funny, but the message is damn serious - what is it with these demented Israelis?

As stated by Gilad Atzmon in his excellent article, "Gaza Flotilla vs. Diaspora Jewry" http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/06/30/gilad-atzmon-gaza-flotilla-vs-diaspora-jewry/

"Jewish identity politics is shaped by a totally unique psychological disorder. I call it Pre Traumatic Stress Syndrome (as opposed to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). Jewish reality is shaped by an imaginary fictional future threat."

He continues: "To repeat the 19^Th century Yiddish joke. “A Jewish telegram: get worried, details to follow.” Yet, the lack of capacity to differentiate between reality and imagination leads to the inevitable emergence of the most tragic possible scenarios. Time after time, the Israeli collective easily buys into any given tragic fictional and imaginary treat, and would approve any ‘counter’ measures."

He continues, most fittingly:
"The end result is known to us all: an endless chain of colossal Israeli war crimes [my emphasis], that are committed in the name of the Jewish people."

How very true.

RANT: Shame on Greece, Gatekeepers for Israel

2011-07-12T13:24:00.000+02:00

A flotilla of activist boats wanting to sail to Gaza in order to break the illegal and amoral Israeli blockade of Gaza remains blocked from doing so in a Greek port.And now, after almost two weeks of being held in limbo by the Greek authorities, this disparate group of about 300 brave activists are starting to disperse.

What else are they to do now that a European country has basically scuppered their chances of setting sail for Gaza?

What I find so obscene about all of this is how it is Greece, of all European countries, that is the one playing gatekeeper and watchdog to that most divisive and racist state of all, Israel.

Greece, for crying out loud!

This is the same Greece that is having its coffers pillaged by the likes of the IMF and ECB.

This is the same Greece that is on the verge of economic collapse, a victim of the sinister foibles of Eurozone politics and economics and the venality of their own leaders.

This is the same Greece who's population is sliding deeper and deeper into debt, recession and long-term poverty.

This is the same Greece who's populace has been striking and demonstrating and rioting in the streets of Athens and inspiring all those of us who want a better, saner economic future.

This is the same hijacked, demoralised, raped Greece.

And what do the Greeks see fit to do? Capitulate to archetypal Israeli bullying and perverted European political pressures that leave a flotilla of peace activists stranded in one of their ports.

Yet another Western stooge for the apartheid state that is Israel.

All of this from...Greece.

Greece should be ashamed of itself.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Dorothy Looking Over the Rainbow - Again

2011-07-11T16:59:00.000+02:00

It has been about two weeks since my last blog. I was deliberating about what topic to write about - the ongoing crisis in Syria/ Libya/ every corner of the Arab world, the debacle with the Gaza flotilla stuck in Greece, the Greek financial crisis, the looming Portuguese financial crisis, even a rave about how Ferrari finally won a Grand Prix again yesterday...

And then I logged onto Blogger.

And what do I find? A whole new lay-out, a whole new look, new buttons to figure out, everything unfamiliar to me yet again and a whole new bloody reason to get annoyed by yet another turn on this infernal Road from (or to?) Hell known as the Information Age.

Why this need for CONSTANT change in this day and age? Yes, I know it's petty of me and it's just a 'new look' Blogger and hardly life-ending stuff, so what's the big deal, right? It isn't a big deal, in and of itself, of course. But what it is is yet another new quirk, another new kink in the already destabilizing world that is Technology [drum roll]. Cellphones, Internet, apps (schmapps, for all I care), even a simple blogging site - this constant state of flux that never allows one to be at ease, to be in a comfort zone, to have instant recognition.

Just as I get used to a certain layout and way to get around Windows, so it changes. Just as I get used to a certain version of name-your-pick-of-annoying-must-have-utterly-essential-software, so it changes. Change, change, bloody change. Incessantly.

I hate this constant, neverending need of this often vile, increasingly 'organic' thing called Technology [drum roll ad nauseam] to keep updating, to keep changing, to keep altering, to keep reinventing itself that with which I have become familiar and, yes, comfortable.

It's like this modern era, beholden as it is to Technology, is Sybil with seven different personalities. And that's all seven personalities restless and reinventing themselves every other week. Demented as all hell.

I find myself yearning ever more and more for a time when things don't need to constantly change just to prove their worth or their staying power. And that includes simply how a bloody blog template works. Because I honestly find this relentless chopping and changing exhausting - and so futile.

Is this the mental 'environment' that advocates like Adbusters talk about and contend that we are having violated in this modern 'information' era? That feeling of having your mental space bombarded by so many stupid little changes and images and other clutter that actually add very little, if any, real value to one's life or wellbeing?

I have lived in five different countries and even more different cities, get itchy if I have to commit to a gym membership for more than a year, get bored by routine a trifle easily and can hardly be called averse to change in my life. I know change can be a good thing, even a great thing.

But sometimes change that looks different but actually means just more of the same thing is change that can irk and irritate and ultimately even alienate. It's not change for the better, but merely change for the sake of change.

This empty, soulless change with multiple personality disorder is the epitome of our desperate, perpetually adolescent age - an age that is never content with what is, is constantly having to re-invent itself and that assumes anything new and revamped simply has to be a good thing. Like, it has to be, right?

This empty, soulless change is Dorothy perpetually looking over that rainbow and always wishing it'll be better some day. Pity Dorothy.

Do you get my point?

RANT: No(where) Ark

2011-06-30T22:00:00.000+02:00

According to Reuters today:

"Irish pro-Palestinian activists accused Israel on Thursday of sabotaging their boat while it was docked in Turkey to stop it joining an international flotilla bound for the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.The crew of the MV Saoirse realized there was something wrong with the propeller shaft when they took the vessel for refueling at Gocek on Turkey's southwest coast on Monday. Activists said a marine engineer who inspected the damaged boat in dry dock declared that it had been sabotaged.

"It's identical to the damage to the Swedish boat and you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who is behind this," Paul Hogan, a former Irish rugby international who was among the activists, told Irish state broadcaster RTE. "Israel has made statements saying that this flotilla will be stopped. The flotilla, which is now down to nine vessels from some 15 planned earlier, hopes to set out over the weekend in an attempt to run an Israeli naval blockade to take relief supplies to Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians."

The Israelis are at it again.

No doubt the Israelis are denying it. Or scoffing at it in that self-righteous and smug arrogance that has become the hallmark of the racist Jewish state.

Whom am I to believe? A group of Irish peace activists versus Israel?

Irish peace activists vs The Apartheid State of Israel.

Hmmmm, that's a really tough one.

Do you get my point?

QUESTION: Where's The UK Domino?

2011-06-21T13:39:00.000+02:00

I came across this interesting diagram today illustrating the ongoing eurozone crisis/ scandal.

The question is: where is the UK domino? Hell, but for its pound and Its City of London-inflated (bloated) economy, it should be right there as well - on the edge of bankruptcy.

Where is the Belgium domino for that matter?

I know which two dominoes I would LOVE to see standing there some day soon - those of Germany and France, the two big bullies on the euro block who keep strong-arming weaker economies into accepting 'bailout packages' and obscene 'austerity' measures, all to keep their Washington Consensus-inspired, corporatist single currency dream (read: nightmare) alive.

I've heard the French economy is hardly stellar at the moment. I've even heard rumblings that the German economy is not as 'hot' and 'robust' as once suggested...

Oh, can one dream?

RANT: Portugal Down the Rabbit Hole

2011-06-21T13:38:00.000+02:00

Today Portugal goes down the rabbit hole. I mean this both figuratively and, even, strangely enough, literally.

Figuratively down a rabbit hole because today the Social Democrats take over government in Portugal, after having won the recent legislative elections. They're a bunch of neo-conservative pricks who pontificate about 'market reforms' and gladly kowtow to bullies like the EU and the IMF, whilst serving the interests of the super-rich and neo-con elites of Portugal and, to a lesser extent, the (fast-dwindling) upper-middle class. In doing so, they pander to the petty conservative fears of the middle-classes (or what remains of that in Portugal today) and even, to my endless amazement, some of the working class (in itself a fast-becoming oxymoron in that country if ever there was).

Literally down a rabbit hole because the man set to become Portugal's Prime Minister is a blandly handsome, thin-lipped creep by the surname of Passos Coelho (picture above - saying it all) - a surname loosely translated into English as "rabbit steps". How very fitting that this patronizing and sly technocrat set to banish Portugal into an abyss has a name so weirdly reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. It's almost Orwellian in its sinister irony.

The PSD, or Social Democrats, coming into power at this C-R-U-C-I-A-L time are the biggest mistake yet made by the Portuguese electorate since the Carnation Revolution of 1974 that brought democracy to the country. Portugal sits on a precipice not at all unlike that over which Greece is falling as I write this. The last thing it needed was a pack of lying, conniving neo-conservatives to push it over that precipice with more cuts, more austerity, more capitulation to the financial terrorists in Brussels and Washington DC.

Portugal should never have been in the euro and, now that it's stuck with that poisoned chalice and more of its population is slipping into de facto poverty, it sees its welfare system being stripped away by the neo-conservative scheisters that champion that blight on humanity, the Washington Consensus.

I always say that a country gets the government it deserves. I've said it for years and I continue to believe in that implicitly. It hardly matters when I say that about countries like Nigeria or the UK, for example - countries I hardly give a toot about. It's a bit more difficult to swallow when that country is one that I know so well and that is part of my heritage, such as Portugal.

Prime Minister "Rabbit Steps" has led Portugal down a primrose path with false terror tactics against the former Socialist government. A government that, at least under the until recently Prime Minister, José Sócrates (pictured below), understood the many dangers of capitulating to the 'bailout package' being foisted on Lisbon by Brussels and Washington DC. And warned about that 'package' again and again. To no avail.

Passos Coelho wishes he could be as erudite, witty and smart as Sócrates no doubt is. The latter will be missed.

Portugal will fall down that rabbit hole. And for that I fear for it very, very much.

Do you get my point?

RANT: The Rape of Greece

2011-06-20T17:35:00.000+02:00

Greece is being raped - again.

Its very sovereignty is hanging on a the merest thread as its own government contemplates selling it right down the line, as the acronymed vultures named EU and IMF hover hungrily.

Greece is on the verge of having to declare bankruptcy. The last round of bailouts simply didn't do the trick after speculators and other financial terrorists targeted the country's fragile economy and 'huge' public debt. There's a surprise. And I bet the IMF is so very surprised that Greece is poised to default on its debt obligations.

Just yesterday a rash of desperate, last minute talks by the EU (read: namely Germany and France, the Big Bloody F***ing Euro Bullies) on another bailout for Greece came to nothing. The big problem? They couldn't get Greece to commit to even more painful cuts to public spending.

Yeah, 'public spending' - that innocuous-sounding phrase that actually means slashed government spending on social welfare, healthcare, education, pensions, supporting arts and culture - you know, all the things that make (or, rather, made) Greece a modern European country. All poised to be slashed yet again - and yet again it is the poor and the middle class of Greece who will take the brunt of all these 'necessary' cuts to public spending.

As if people were having cuts made to their ability to get daily manicures and pedicures and other such luxuries, you know.

'Cuts' made in the name of bailing out scheister banks, propping up a failed experiment that is the euro and kowtowing to financial terrorists like the IMF.

Greece is being raped, pillaged and its very guts ripped out. No wonder the people are in the streets, raging with anger.

This will go down in history as a shameful chapter in European and world financial history. No doubt about that.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Berlusconi il Buffone

2011-06-20T17:34:00.001+02:00

It's been over a month since I last wrote on this blog, even if I only today figured out that my last three posts written back in May were never published! That's way too much time, especially given how many momentous things have happened in the past few weeks - the ongoing debacle that is the 'freedom struggle' in Libya, the bona fide freedom struggle in Syria, the n-e-v-e-r-e-n-d-i-n-g disgrace that are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the scary creepiness of the Japanese nuclear fallout, the latest rape of the Greek people by the financial terrorists of the world - the list goes on and on. Many of them reducing me, as usual, to a screaming, gesticluating Man Mad At The World - usually at a TV set, I hasten to add...

So what topic do I choose to do my first actual post in over a month? I found myself simply unable to resist a chance to have a good kick at Signor Berlusconi. This man, the very scourge of Italy and the very eiptome of all things italiano that are rancid and sick to the core, seems to have suffered a PRETTY BIG SMACK last week.

I, along with millions of Italian voters, told Il Diavolo Berlusconi just what we thought of him on not one but three different referenda issues, namely:

A resounding rejection of his desire to privatize water
A resounding rejection of his desire to bring nuclear power to Italy, and
A resounding rejection of his (deep, very deep) desire to have public officials immune from prosecution

I do think that the third issue on which he lost must have cut Il Diavolo/ Buffone/ Cretino Berlusconi the deepest and the harshest. After all, this is a man against whom charges of corruption and abuse of state and personal power run as long as his smile is shallow.

The man is contemptible beyond redemption - he is a corrupt, diabolical Macchiavelli and his success only further re-iterates the much-held belief that Italian politics is a joke unto itself and that Italian society is fundamentally warped to the core.

I detest Berlusconi and all that he stands for.

This triple whammy of defeats last Monday must surely have hurt him politically. Dare I say it - perhaps even mortally?

May my next rave for this hideous man be a rejoice of his having stepped down as Prime Minister of Italy - for the third time, may I add.

Where are the Red Brigades when you need them?

Do you get my point?

RANT: Vulgar Wealth Blocks SoHo

2011-06-20T17:34:00.000+02:00

I read a silly little piece on Yahoo News a while ago which had the ability to irk me. It still does...

It was regarding Will Smith and a movie trailer the size of the Battlestar Galactica. Turns out that the residents of a certain neighbourhood in SoHo were up in arms because of the ginormous personal trailer that Will Smith had parked in the street.
The actor was in NYC doing shooting for the latest "Men in Black" instalment. You know, just another reason for the overrated actor to make another few tens of millions of dollars.
The New York Post reported how his 53-foot double decker trailer had so blocked the street that businesses were losing money and traffic was affected. That's roughly 28 metres long for those of us in the rest of the world who use the metric system. Residents in the area, true to Noo Yawk form, were furious and very vocal about it. He finally had to move his $9000 a week trailer (that's right, $9000 a week just for a lousy freaking trailer) up the street to a parking lot where it will now be docked.

A local public official made the hilarious comment that, "Hardworking New Yorkers have a right to wake up in the morning and not find a cruise ship parked out in front of their house."Too true! Not to mention a Hollywood star with clearly an ego the size of Manhattan to boot strutting about.

The poor little thing with his goofy grin and cauliflower ears now has to walk a full mile between his trailer and the set. Poor little munchkins.

Oh, and he also has his own $25000 a month apartment just a mile away. You know, as we all do when we're in these where-the-hell-do-I-park-my-53-foot-personal-trailer issues in life.

Who the fackula are these people?

Who are these twerps who prance around sets and make (some of) us laugh and be entertained for a couple of hours and JUST FOR THAT become these multi-multi-multi-millionaires who behave as if they were born this way and that their behaviour is simply so utterly normal and so, you know, earned, dude, you know, like.

It is this obscene, vulgar display of such conspicuous wealth, inevitably shoved in our 'plebian' faces with utter brattish contempt, that makes me so bloody angry. Not to mention want to smack a useless turd like Will Smith to within an inch of his life. Or get the Mafia to do it for me.

It is not cute, it is not funny and it is not just 'a little thing' to be shrugged off. It is symptomatic of just how warped our times have become when a Hollywood star sees fit to park a 53-foot trailer in the middle of SoHo.
Does this gormless idiot not realize there is still a recession going on in America? Of course he doesn't - he lives in the stratosphere, pissing down on the rest of us with his opulent and charmed-beyond-belief life. It's rather fitting, then, that he's shooting a film about aliens.

Does he care? Clearly not a damn. Thing is, neither would I if the masses were to one day get hold of super-rich f***ers like this and show them a thing or two about mob justice. Or just call in the Mafia.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Robin Hood Would've Wept

2011-06-20T17:32:00.000+02:00

I came across another article on Yahoo News, once again linking to an article in the New York Post, which annoyed me even more than the one about Will Smith's super-size trailer (see previous post). This one had to do with a charity benefit in which Lady GaGa performed in front of a room full of Wall Street's 'best' (ahem...) and 'finest' (again, ahem...).

A room full of fatcat scheisters so grossly rich that they make Will Smith look like an impoverished Ethiopian.

The article was a showcase of one example after another of just how ironically screwed up the United States and its super-rich thieves have truly become.

Take Lady GaGa. She the modern temptress of ironic kitsch and wit. She performs in front of these super-rich twats, no doubt picking up a huge pay cheque for her one night's work, and what's her grand gesture of 'irony and wit' at this crowd? She supposedly 'breaks a nail' and shows the fatcats the broken nail, thereby "showing them the middle finger" as she giggled, according to the article. Oh, what wit, Ms GaGa!

That may have been her (lame) attempt at poking fun at the assembled fatcats, but she's still a big sell-out.

Then there's the assembled fatcats. According to the Post, "The generous bigwigs coughed up $11 million in donations via credit card machines on each table to help Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans and fight poverty while the night took in more than $47 million. Bidding on a recording session with the Black Eyed Peas reached $400,000."

The mind boggles (and the stomach turns) at that statement. Consider it:

"Credit card machines on each table"?! The sheer vulgarity of that image belies description. And how does Wall Street give so 'generously' to these charities? By paying with...wait for it...credit! Oh, what sweet irony.
"To help Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans"? Really? Shouldn't the government be doing that? Oh, that's right - your government is bankrupt, all because it decided to sell its soul to Lucifer and spend all those billions bailing your Wall Street fatcat asses out, you greedy, conniving bastards!
"Fight poverty"? Would that be the poverty that you, Wall Street, caused more than anything else in your country in the last few years?! Is it that poverty you're wanting to 'fight'?
"$47-million"? Is that all?
"Black Eyed Peas"? Another bunch of sell-outs. Big surprise.

But the biggest irony at an event dripping with irony? The name of the charity - the Robin Hood Foundation. That's right - the biggest thieves in the modern era, the robber barons of Wall Street, were wining and dining and living it up and being warbled at by Lady GaGa for a charity called the Robin Hood Foundation.

Except these rich scheisters on Wall Street got it all confused - Robin Hood was about stealing from the rich to give to the poor, not the other way around, you gormless, amoral turds!

Robin Hood would've wept, not to mention Jesus.

Where are those blood-baying crowds of the French Revolution when you need them, huh?

Do you get my point?

RAVE: It Says It All...

2011-06-20T17:31:00.000+02:00

I came across this cartoon today regarding the massive bail-out given to Wall Street at the expense of the American public. And for which the average American continues to pay, pay, pay...

It really says it all...

RAVE: My Eurovision 2011 Choices

2011-05-14T20:49:00.000+02:00

With just over an hour before the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest gets under way in Germany, here then are my choices from this year's 25 finalists.

Follow the links to hear each of the songs that were my favourite.

My choices will be done with the exact same voting system used by all the juries - a voting system which has become synonymous with the Eurovision Song Contest...

Here they are, my top ten:

(10th) 1 point - ROMANIA

"Change" by Hotel FM: Goodlooking guy, good voice, quite a nice song from a country that consistently offers me one of my favourite choices each Eurovision.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q1WpOTpZ1A

(9th) 2 points - ITALY

"Follia d'amore" by Rapahel Gualazzi: A tremendous suave mood and some great piano at times, only spoilt by too much jazz at key moments. Still, a welcome return after 14 years absence for Italia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfwGqf0bHd0

(8th) 3 points - ICELAND

"Coming Home" by Sjonni' Friends: A bit folksy at times, but a still lovely, sweet song from a country that I have consistently loved at Eurovision for years now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY2l00PC0JA

(7th) 4 points - SWITZERLAND

"In Love For a While" by Anna Rossinelli: Deceptively simple. A sweet tune, and really lovely singer with a voice to match. One of the understated joys of the year. Charming, lovely simplicity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8kgzFpMDUw

(6th) 5 points - ESTONIA

"Rockefeller Street" by Getter Jaani: A terrific opening riff and very clever beat, only spoilt slightly by a too repetitious ending. This would've been in my top three had it been more stylishly composed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feypa0Di014

(5th) 6 points - AZERBAIJAN

"Running Scared" by Eldar & Nigar: Very pop, very much a love song, very Eurovision - yet it totally works for me. This duo work terrific together, has great orchestration and it's damn catchy. Love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vk4HYUatv8

(4th) 7 points - UNITED KINGDOM

"I Can" by Blue: A very clever, very committed choice by the UK. Yes, they're an established boy band and the song is hardly groundbreaking, but it's strong, modern pop and, yes, hellishly catchy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2JYc_jWIDQ

And now my Top Three...

(3rd) 8 points - HUNGARY

"What About My Dreams" by Kati Wolf: What a voice this woman has! Shades of Celine Dion, but still all hers - powerful and resonant and a true voice. The song may be pop, but it's great pop. Terrific!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbKNKfePCrs

(2nd) 10 points - DENMARK

"New Tomorrow" by A Friend in London: Incredibly catchy, incredibly clever and a hit in the making by this indie band. I loved this from the first hearing. Yet again, Denmark delivers one of my favourite songs. Great!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_fFy5Icbh0

And finally...

without a doubt for me...

my ABSOLUTE favourite song of the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest...

1st with DOUZE POINTS...FINLAND!

"Da Da Dum" by Paradise Oskar: The first time I heard this tears welled in my eyes within seconds of hearing it. Superb ecological message, superb lyrics, great voice. Just beautiful. GO FINLAND!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoDsA9PutU4

And there they are - my favourite ten songs for this year's Eurovision.

Honourable mentions: SERBIA, GERMANY, SLOVENIA and UKRAINE (in that order...for now) - all really good songs in their own way which, on the night, may do better in my final rankings than countries like Romania, Italy, Iceland and even Switzerland. We'll see.

Finland's entry is too smart and too 'simple' to win Eurovision and has been dealt a death blow by being the 1st song on the Finals night - never a good thing in this competition. But it'll remain my favourite for sure.

They say France is a big favourite - great voice, brave concept, but I very much doubt it. Simply too operatic - and not memorable, to be honest. And I usually love the French entry!

Other favourites are Ireland (horrific - camp at its worst, not its best), the UK (very okay with that), Azerbaijan (very okay with that too) and, heaven help us, Sweden (annoying, unbelievably repetitive and shitty song). I also hope Russia (cute guy - can't sing, crap song) doesn't win just because of all those Eastern European votes. Greece isn't much better. Austria is also crap, whilst Moldova is diabolically bad!

Bosnia & Herzegovina has a song I actually quite like, but it'll never win, nor will Lithuania, although that song is boring and that woman sings way off-key! Georgia will also not win, which is fine with me

Just watch Azerbaijan - they could go all the way and beat the heavyweights. And just watch Spain maybe come away with nul points - the song deserves no more, frankly.

Less than ten minutes to go - it's Eurovision time!

RAVE: Why I Love Eurovision

2011-05-14T19:43:00.001+02:00

In less than two hours it will be the 56th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Dusseldorf. Yet again, I will sit glued to the television as the show is aired live via satellite on the Portuguese station, RTP Internacional. I will, as ever, thoroughly enjoy some of the better songs, whilst groaning and laughing out with derision at some of the terrible songs on display.

And some of it is toe-curdling stuff, to which anyone who has ever watched the show can attest.

So, why do I bother? Why do I sit through this music fest, this ode to kitsch and camp in high gear so derided and so made fun of by so many? Why?

I'll tell you why...

1. Because Eurovision is an opportunity to just sit back and just enjoy the show, knowing none of it is terribly important.

2. Because, even through all the dreck and the horrendous songs, there are always those few songs that really shine through, that are really quite good, and which are sung really rather well.

3. Because even the dreck and horrendous songs can be so much fun.

4. Because no one does glorious, technicolour kitsch quite like the Eurovision Song Contest. And, once in a while, I'm a total sucker for technicolour kitsch.

5. Because any competition that gave ABBA their breakthrough is deserving of respect. Enough said.

6. Because I love a good competition, especially between countries. Countries, flags, voting - hell, I'm in. Douze points, baby!

7. Because it's fun and all done with good heart and for the hell of it. It's a terrific, fun tonic. And, hey, how many things can one say that about in this day and age?

8. Because in its own funny, weird little way, it does unite Europe, which is really great to see. Even if for only one night.

9. Because after a few years in the early- to mid-2000s of hyper-regionalism in the voting which really made me very angry, it seems they've (to an extent) sorted that one out. Unless Moldova or Sweden win tonight - and then I'll be spitting blood and hating Eurovision all over again!

10. Because it's a constant in my life. Every year in mid-May I know that I can look forward to this camp, kitsch musical affair that seems to drip with technicolour. It's something I can look forward to. Something akin to what the Oscars once meant to me and no longer do.

I take Eurovision for what it is and enjoy every moment, both the great and the atrocious. Isn't that enough?

Do you get my point?

RAVE: It Says It All...

2011-05-14T19:19:00.000+02:00

I came across this cartoon today regarding the massive bail-out given to Wall Street at the expense of the American public.

It really says it all...

RANT: Robin Hood Would've Wept

2011-05-14T19:18:00.000+02:00

A room full of fatcat scheisters so grossly rich that they make Will Smith look like an impoverished Ethiopian.

The article was a showcase of one example after another of just how ironically screwed up the United States and its super-rich thieves have truly become.

That may have been her (lame) attempt at poking fun at the assembled fatcats, but she's still a big sell-out.

The mind boggles (and the stomach turns) at that statement. Consider it:

"Credit card machines on each table"?! The sheer vulgarity of that image belies description. And how does Wall Street give so 'generously' to these charities? By paying with...wait for it...credit! Oh, what sweet irony.
"To help Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans"? Really? Shouldn't the government be doing that? Oh, that's right - your government is bankrupt, all because it decided to sell its soul to Lucifer and spend all those billions bailing your Wall Street fatcat asses out, you greedy, conniving bastards!
"Fight poverty"? Would that be the poverty that you, Wall Street, caused more than anything else in your country in the last few years?! Is it that poverty you're wanting to 'fight'?
"$47-million"? Is that all?
"Black Eyed Peas"? Another bunch of sell-outs. Big surprise.

Except these rich scheisters on Wall Street got it all confused - Robin Hood was about stealing from the rich to give to the poor, not the other way around, you gormless, amoral turds!

Robin Hood would've wept, not to mention Jesus.

Where are those blood-baying crowds of the French Revolution when you need them, huh?

Do you get my point?

RANT: Vulgar Wealth Blocks SoHo

2011-05-14T19:16:00.000+02:00

I read a silly little piece on Yahoo News this morning which had the ability to irk me. It was regarding Will Smith and a movie trailer the size of the Battlestar Galactica. Turns out that the residents of a certain neighbourhood in SoHo were up in arms because of the ginormous personal trailer that Will Smith had parked in the street.

The actor is in NYC doing shooting for the latest "Men in Black" instalment. You know, just another reason for the overrated actor to make another few tens of millions of dollars.

The New York Post reported how his 53-foot double decker trailer had so blocked the street that businesses were losing money and traffic was affected. That's roughly 28 metres long for those of us in the rest of the world who use the metric system. Residents in the area, true to Noo Yawk form, were furious and very vocal about it. He finally had to move his $9000 a week trailer (that's right, $9000 a week just for a lousy freaking trailer) up the street to a parking lot where it will now be docked.

A local public official made the hilarious comment that, "Hardworking New Yorkers have a right to wake up in the morning and not find a cruise ship parked out in front of their house."Too true! Not to mention a Hollywood star with clearly an ego the size of Manhattan to boot strutting about.
The poor little thing with his goofy grin and cauliflower ears now has to walk a full mile between his trailer and the set. Poor little munchkins.

Oh, and he also has his own $25000 a month apartment just a mile away. You know, as we all do when we're in these where-the-hell-do-I-park-my-53-foot-personal-trailer issues in life.

Who the fackula are these people?

Who are these twerps who prance around sets and make (some of) us laugh and be entertained for a couple of hours and JUST FOR THAT become these multi-multi-multi-millionaires who behave as if they were born this way and that their behaviour is simply so utterly normal and so, you know, earned, dude, you know, like.

It is this obscene, vulgar display of such conspicuous wealth, inevitably shoved in our 'plebian' faces with utter brattish contempt, that makes me so bloody angry. Not to mention want to smack a useless turd like Will Smith to within an inch of his life. Or get the Mafia to do it for me.

It is not cute, it is not funny and it is not just 'a little thing' to be shrugged off. It is symptomatic of just how warped our times have become when a Hollywood star sees fit to park a 53-foot trailer in the middle of SoHo.

Does this gormless idiot not realize there is still a recession going on in America? Of course he doesn't - he lives in the stratosphere, pissing down on the rest of us with his opulent and charmed-beyond-belief life. It's rather fitting, then, that he's shooting a film about aliens.

Does he care? Clearly not a damn. Thing is, neither would I if the masses were to one day get hold of super-rich f***ers like this and show them a thing or two about mob justice. Or just call in the Mafia.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Hating Facebook Is So Easy 1

2011-05-03T13:03:00.001+02:00

I've just posted on the brilliant Julian Assange and his damning assessment of just how nefarious Facebook really is. Like Sarah Palin, this is one blog that finds hating Facebook so very easy to do.

It's now well over a year since I was a member of that most hideous social networking site, yet my rancour towards it continues afresh, now spurred by Assange calling it the "most appalling spy ever".

I literally ran for my life from Facebook. And, boy, was it difficult to get all my data erased and not be able to freely 'access' my profile even after I had supposedly deleted it. That in itself was a creepy, creepy exercise in how and why to hate Facebook.

Hence, I simply had to post this picture below that I came across, courtesy of sounds-like-me.com. It really says it all.

RAVE: Assange & The Most Appalling Spy

2011-05-03T13:02:00.000+02:00

I always grab any opportunity to sit down and listen to Julian Assange. He is always erudite, exacting and entirely on point. For all his many detractors, he continues to be the voice of reason and truth in the midst of all the hogwash and corporatist propaganda masquerading as 'media' and 'news' these days. It wasn't by chance that he (just) beat out the brilliant Max Keiser to be my Man of the Year last year.

In an interview yesterday with Russia Today (RT) regarding his pending (and outrageous) extradition to Sweden and the ever-threatening presence of the United States in his life, he spoke of the media and how the powers that be continue to usurp our truth.

What really caught my attention, however, was how critical Assange was of the Internet and culture phenom that is Facebook. He analysed how much personal information, not to mention other habits, that Facebook had on its files with regard to its hundreds of millions of users. He is convinced that so much information being in the hands of a corporation like Facebook can only be bad, especially given their poor track record to date regarding data disclosure. Very bad.

In fact, he went to so far as to suggest that Facebook could most certainly be a front today for the United States government, possibly even the CIA, and their many, many nefarious and privacy-invading schemes and neuroses. He called Facebook the "most appalling spy ever."

That's correct - there it was writ large on an RT banner at the bottom of the screen: "Assange: Facebook Most Appalling Spy Ever".

I didn't just relish that statement - I positively whooped in glee! All my worst fears as to just just how creepy Facebook had made me feel came rushing to the fore. To have Julian Assange put that putrid organisation into such stark, lucid context was music to my ears. Yes, it's exactly what I wanted to hear, unexpected as it was.

Facebook is everything I loathe about this Internet era - the scummiest downside, its very nadir. It's the pervasive, relentless cheering of the mundane and the petty and the banal, not to mention the very dumbing down of society. It is mental voyeurism that cheapens us all.

And, yes, I do believe it could be a front for much larger, much more sinister machinations by the paranoid powers that be.

Trust Julian Assange to put it out there, and in no uncertain terms. Thank goodness for his voice.

Do you get my point?

REMEMBRANCE: An Anniversary to Forget

2011-04-26T23:56:00.001+02:00

Today is exactly 25 years since the nuclear disaster occurred at Chernobyl in what was then the Soviet Union. Today the surrounding town of Pripyat is a ghost town, as is a 15km (or thereabouts) 'exclusion zone' around the town, so toxic is the environment.

It was late April in 1986 and I remember so well hearing about it on the radio and all over the news. Everyone was talking about it. I remember how we were all glad, downright relieved, in fact, to be living on the southern tip of Africa, far from those clouds bearing toxic elements too awful to contemplate.

'Exclusion zone' - don't you just love the coy language of the psychotic nihilism that is nuclear speak?

'Exclusion' from what? Oh, yes, that's right - life itself.

Chernobyl is a vault of hellish memories, a scar on our collective conscience, a veritable Pandora's box of humanity's depths of possible hell on Earth. It is not the best of who we were, or who we should be.

It's all been said - all the stats, all the stories, all the endless what-ifs. Pity that we STILL haven't reached the never-agains.

After all, the next time some mindless (or bought out) prat tries to convince you of the 'positives' of nuclear power, do be sure to show them the following:

Do you get my point?

RIP Vittorio Arrigoni

2011-04-17T11:55:00.000+02:00

I was very saddened to read on Friday about the murder of the Italian peace activist, Vittorio Arrigoni. He was found dead, presumably from either being strangled or hanged, in an abandoned house in Gaza. He had been abducted just one day before. There had already been a Youtube clip showing him blindfolded and bloodied and with one of his captor's hands holding up his face by his hair.

The savages that did this to him are some extreme Islamist group, known as 'Salafist jihadists', and who have already taken responsibility for his murder. May they all rot in their collective little Muslim hell, the bastards.

The referred to him as an 'infidel' and accused Italy of being an 'infidel nation'. Imagine - a word as primitive and medieval as 'infidel' still being used in the 21st century.

This is a man who left his native Italy in 2008 and, under the auspices of the NGO, International Solidarity Movement (ISM), entered Gaza by boat in order to voice his opposition, along with other peace activists, to the illegal and inhumane blockade of Gaza by Israel. I have read that he was very loved within Gaza and had many Palestinian friends and admirers.

And now, in this deepest and most sick of ironies, he gets killed by Palestinian terrorists, a group of fanatics amongst the very people to whom he came to show his most brave solidarity.

Or perhaps masterminded by Mossad? That certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Of course, the Israelis and Jewish/ pro-Israeli online press are milking it hugely for what it's worth. The irony is obviously not lost on them, and it serves only to reinforce their own twisted prejudices about the Palestinians, and make their own perverted country, the perversion known as the State of Israel, somehow the 'winner' in all of this. 'You see - they're barbarians, these Palestinians. They even kill those who come to support them and who hate us," you can almost hear the Zionist press crowing.

Palestinian terrorists, Israeli apartheid state, Zionist apologists - all part of the same, sick festering broth. Bastards, all of them.

I know it's because of his leftwing and anti-Israeli occupation beliefs that I have so much empathy for him. Perhaps it's too because he is an Italian and has the same first name as I.

Whatever his failings and whatever muck people might throw at him, this was no doubt a basically decent, courageous man of conviction who wanted to show his solidarity with the Palestinian people and show his outrage at the state of Israel.

And he dies alone in an abandoned house in this most shocking manner. A brave life cut short far too soon in a far too barbaric manner and already mocked by far too many.

He deserved so much better. May you, a man of peace, rest in eternal peace, Vittorio.

RANT: It's Level 7 in Japan

2011-04-14T07:52:00.001+02:00

It's official: the nuclear plant disaster at Fukushima in Japan is being put on a par with Chernobyl, the nuclear disaster that horrified the world back in 1986.

To directly quote the Associated Press:

"Japan raised the severity level of the crisis at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing cumulative radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.

Japanese nuclear regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency — after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.

The new ranking signifies a "major accident" that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA."

Geez, this Fukushima power plant is becoming a real poster child for the nucear energy industry, is it not?

This is the best we can do?

Yet there will be people who will no doubt keep insisting that nuclear power is a viable alternative energy source

Yet there will be people who will no doubt keep insisting that nuclear power plants are fundamentally safe for the environment and to human health

Yet there will be people who will no doubt keep insisting that nuclear is a far better and more practical energy choice than are the likes of wind and solar and wave and other renewable energy sources

Uh huh. And in every single generation there are those that are devious or liars or self-interested or greedy or even simply delusional; those that will stand for anything, even if it is sheer madness to do so. Every. Single. Generation.

And they are damned by history; sadly, often when it is already too late.

Are you listening, George Monbiot and your fellow (demented, stupid, dangerous) nuclear apologists?

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Here's To Yuri Gagarin!

2011-04-14T07:52:00.000+02:00

Today is exactly fifty years ago that the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to journey into outer pace. He and the USSR stunned the world when he achieved this on April 12th, 1961.

Gagarin, who became beloved the world over not only for his amazing feat, but also for his easy smile and charming boyishness, was a pioneer like very few seen in the 20th century. I wasn't even born when Yuri did his famous flight, yet I heard so much about him growing up from my elders. There had already been other space-age heroes like the first man to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, or the first men on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but somehow none of them seemed to be recalled so fondly as Yuri Gagarin.

By the way, I thought the banner today on Google especially fitting in its look and design in commemoration of this special date in human history:

Perhaps there was nostalgia for Yuri when I was younger due to the fact that he was killed so tragically in 1968 whilst a pilot in training on a Mig-15 fighter jet. Perhaps it seemed unfair and especially poignant to that generation that this smiling, affable hero of the burgeoning space era had been killed so young.

Be that as it may, Yuri Gagarin will forever be etched in my memory as the first of the known and beloved space heroes. And in this cynical day and age in which heroes seem so few and far between, even non-existent, then his heroism forever etched in black-and-white photos and footage seems even more poignant and resonant.

There were other space heroes, and no doubt many people who made that space flight possible back in April 1961, but none of them could carry it so perfectly on their shoulders as did the wonderful Yuri Gagarin.

I hope you're smiling up in the stars where you belong, Yuri.

RAVE: The Remarkable Judge Wesley Brown

2011-04-14T07:51:00.000+02:00

I came across an amazing story today on Yahoo News! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_old_judge#mwpphu-container about a man who still presides as a District Court judge in Kansas - at the ripe age of 103. Judge Wesley Brown may wheel himself into court, he may have taken on a lighter work load (but only very recently) and he may need to be picked up each day from his assisted living centre, but this remarkable man is still going strong.

In a testament to his sharp mind, when recently asked in an interview as to when he thought he would retire, he quipped: "As a federal judge, I was appointed for life or good behavior, whichever I lose first", and then added that he would leave the couthouse "Feet first."

Interesting were the comments by other people to the post on Yahoo. Some of them were highly complimentary of a man who still had the energy and wits to continue being a high-ranking judge, whilst others couldn't help take jibes at his age and 'inevitable' senility. Always that cliche of the 'dithering old man (or woman)', just because someone has reached an old age and - heaven forbid - still wants to be active and have interests in life.

Pathetic how ageism continues to be one of the last bastions of fairly accepted prejudices.

I've never understood the need of some to mock the aged that strive to be independent or continue pursuing their passions. Perhaps it's because I grew up with a great-grandmother who would still catch a bus into town when already in her early 80s just to see a movie by herself, or a grandfather who in his late 70s was still enjoying his motorbike and doing breakfast runs with biking buddies young enough to be his great-grandsons. Or my other grandfather who was still working full days as a civil engineer out in the field until literally days before he died of lung cancer in his mid-70s. To have Vovo Joey, Vovo Ruy and Nonno in my life just to show me that, I know I was lucky.
What I most enjoyed about the article was having confirmation yet again about something I've always very strong about. And the older I get, the more I see it, and the more I believe it: simply, what keeps certain people old and alive and sharp of mind - is nothing more than having interests. Real interests. Even hobbies. But the ones that keep your mind sharp and alert and always learning new things. Coupled, always, with a certain passion for life. Judge Brown, keeps abreast of things on his computer every day. He is 103 and there are people I know forty years his junior that 'freak out' at the idea of using a computer, and even refuse to learn. But he does so. With relish, I am sure.

Even at 103, he still reads vociferously, including enjoying reading semi-pulp mystery and western fiction, which he borrows off one of the court clerks. I love it!

I've always felt that aging need not be something that is horrible and degrading in and of itself. Of course the body becomes weaker and less able and more fraught with disease. I am still young, so I cannot know what that is about. But one can know that to be true of old age. The fact that we age is one of the cruelest fates of the human condition. It is cruelty personified. But there is aging as well as you can and, well, just aging badly.

One cannot discount the misfortune of any terrible affliction or disease that may come along, of course. That too can hit even the most healthy and the most vital. All too often, unfortunately. But I do believe that, with a bit of luck, aging well or aging badly is indeed within our hands.

A man like Judge Brown is not someone I can deride for being an 'old fogey'. How disrespectful. I can have nothing but the greatest of admiration for this man. He no doubt has his frailties due to his age, but there is no denying that this is a man who is aging with the utmost of grace and dignity. Surely that is what it's all about?

Judge Wesley Brown and all like him, even those younger, are what aging should be all about. Especially in this day and age in which youth and perfection have such a powerful and perverse (strangle)hold over society.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Hacking the English Language Can Be Fun!

2011-04-10T13:07:00.001+02:00

I've just made my fellow spelling- and grammar-obsessed brethren at the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar my Site of the Day. And with good reason.

Below is their latest post, headlined, "So That's What She Does With the Extra Virgin Olive Oil"

SPOGG's Martha Brockenbrough follows up by commenting (my italics for emphasis:

Thanks to assorted SPOGGers who sent this along, we now know that Rachael Ray is a cannibal. A cannibal who not only gets nutrition from cooking her family and her dog, but also inspiration.

We think we're going to barf right about ... now.

(And yes, this demonstrates why commas are sometimes very necessary. But next time we're hungry, we'll be sure to consult her recipe for cooking family members. Some of our nieces and nephews look delicious.)

More from the site dating back to January of this year (italics and bold for emphasis):

Tales from the Casting Ouch

Our monthly feature, as compiled and commented upon by a genuine Hollywood Actress:

Lets get payed!

Let's get an apostrophe and a spell checker!

You're list of credits.

Please give that apostrophe to the previous guy, and drop the E, because you are wrong.

I've got rythm.

No, no, you don't.

We are an independant movie.

Do you offer pendants? I could use another necklace.

Brilliant stuff.

SITE OF THE DAY: The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar

2011-04-10T13:07:00.000+02:00

There's a fantastic blog that I like to visit once in a while, and which always provides a damn good laugh or more. It's at www.grammatically.blogspot.com and is run Martha Brockenbrough under the auspices of the 'Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar', or SPOGG. She's even written a book, "Things That Make Us [sic]", which I simply must get to read when I can.

The entire blog is one scathing, merciless attack after another on advertisers, newspapers, magazines, all media for that matter, or simple ordinary folk who have the affront to maim, hack and basically cripple the English language. It can be whether the offending party (and, let's face it, people who hack the beautiful English language are offensive) left out a word, misspelt a word or mangled grammar in any way, shape or form.

Or, if they do that which seems to be SPOGG's definite bete noir (it certainly is mine), and use an apostrophe inappropriately.

Ah, yes, I do know what that can do to one.

Why, oh why, must people use the apostrophe with such wild and stupid abandon?!!

Take a big breath, Vittorio...

I can only be thankful for other people who feel the same way that I do, and doubly thankful for a site as witty and unwaivering as that provided by Ms. Brockenbrough and her SPOGG.

TURNCOAT OF THE YEAR: George Monbiot

2011-04-05T21:45:00.000+02:00

Forget being merely the 'Turncoat of the Month', it's only April and yet George Monbiot is already my chosen Turncoat of the Year.

You just have to read my previous post to see just why I'd say that.

I'm quite sure the nuclear industry will make you their Person of the Year, George...

RANT: Monbiot, Mon Cretin

2011-04-05T21:44:00.000+02:00

George Monbiot was a man for whom I used to have much respect. A noted environmentalist, a (fairly) witty writer, a leftwing(ish) iconoclast and thorn in the side of conservative Britain, a man with an opinion.

This was a man on our side. The side of those who are left-of-centre (or even more left), who don't worship greed for the sake of greed, who respect the basic tenets of a welfare state. A man who fights to combat climate change and writes a book entitled 'Heat: How To Stop the Planet from Burning".

Hell, this is a man who heads a campaign to have Tony Blair arrested for war crimes! This is definitely my kind of (intellectual) man.

Or so I thought.

Then this guy goes and writes the most preposterous ode to the 'wonders' of nuclear power on his blog, with the highly provocative heading " - http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/. He writes as if nuclear power is the absolute answer after all (shucks, Georgie, thanks for pointing that one out to us lesser beings), citing tedious 'scientific' fact after 'scientific' fact, deluging the reader with these facts in a ploy so typical of anyone trying to oh-so-prove-their-clever-and-so-very-iconoclastic-point.

He apparently makes light of what past nuclear disasters have meant to the environment and human health and, in appallingly poor taste, dismisses by implication what the people of Japan have been going through for the past few weeks.

Even more annoyingly, he writes that nuclear power is just so inevitable, so necessary because, after all, those other poxy, piddling energy sources (you know, clean, renewable, energies) will simply take too much time (boo) and money (hoo) to get right. As if nuclear power was a cynch and so wonderfully cheap.

Then this Turncoat of the Year has the chutzpah to write another nuclear cheerleading article, this time chiding us with "Evidence Meltdown", extolling further the wonder of nuclear power and how utterly misled the green movement has been on the 'exaggerated' health dangers of nuclear energy.

Where does one start?

What about nuclear waste, George? Where the hell does that go, hey? What about the exhorbitant cost of building a new nuclear plant or maintaining an old one? What of the fact that out of a turnover of over $60-billion last year, the Japanese nuclear company, Tepco, was only able to eke out a profit of $1.1-billion? What of the massive government subsidies to the nuclear industry in every single country that has nuclear power plants?

Hey, George? Oh, why bother.

Who is this guy? And what body snatcher from outer space took his mind over to result in this excrutiating volte-face in the past two weeks?

Gone is what I thought of him. He appears to me now as some intellectual who sashays around with his liberal-leaning pontifications in that (barely) liberal-leaning newspaper, The Guardian, and, like some creepy 21st Century Pied Piper, leads those entranced by him down the path of self-doubt, self-recrimination and dubious thought.

Yes, nuclear is an answer! Yes, the green movement has gotten it all wrong with their grubby little 'agendas'! Yes, all those anti-nuclear activists are just misled! George has the answers!

Jesus wept.

Why this? Why nuclear? Why now?

So I've been thinking, and it can only be this: You, George, are nothing more than an attention-seeking brat. You are a man who is an iconoclast not out of conviction, but sheer ego.

Your agenda is plain to see - pure ego and self-aggrandizement. It is a frankly pathetic agenda, an affliction hardly worthy of someone of your no-doubt excellent, if flawed, intellect.

George Monbiot is no longer someone I can hold up in high esteem. He is no longer someone who's intellect I can trust.

George Monbiot is an enemy in our midst.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Oh-Bama - No Change?

2011-04-05T21:42:00.000+02:00

Yesterday ol' Barack Obama publicly announced that he will be running for re-election for US President in 2012...

YAWN

There's a surprise. What did take me by surprise was the news that his election bid was expected to raise up to $1-billion...

$1-BILLION!!!!!

Then I stopped to think. Why should I be surprised that the man is going to get such an obscene amount of money just to run for President again? Of course he'll raise that type of cash.

Why? Simple. After all that was said and done during his (crappy, lying, cheating, deceiving) campaign back in 2008, he has bent over backwards to facilitate the scheisters and financial terrorists on Wall Street and in corporate America. No wonder they'll flock in their greedy, pilfering, extorting thousands to back his campaign. Hell, he's done as much as any Republic president would've done to ensure that the status quo remains the same in the moral gulag that is Wall Street.

Yeah, Obama, you huge fricking let-down and weak president, you will get your money and, who knows, maybe even beat those other bastards who have the nerve to have the elephant as their mascot.

So many good, honest, liberal, Bush-hating people have been so disappointed by this man. Oh, boo hoo. What the hell did they expect? An entire (crappy, lying, cheating, deceiving) campaign based on just one lousy word - 'change'? Yeah, right.

You get what you deserve.

You ask anyone who knew me at the time of that election, and they'll tell you I never once fell for the (crappy, lying, cheating, deceiving) crapola that was his campaign. Not once. Change indeed.

And heaven knows we all deserved radical change for the better after eight years of the sheer hell that was George W. Bush as President.

At best Obama was incredibly naive, at worst he was incredibly cynical. Strange thing is that after more than two years in office, that troubling paradox remains true of this man. Either way, it simply isn't good enough.

In the end, this remains the type of option for a great nation like the United States. Pathetic. They deserve better. We all deserve better.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Hating Sarah Palin Is So Easy 2

2011-04-05T21:41:00.000+02:00

Here are some more cartoons poking fun at that biggest cartoon of all, Sarah Palin:

Read what?! (Does she even write?)

Too true!

Ya betcha, ya little tyke!

And heaven forbid!

RANT: A 'Perky' Economy?

2011-04-03T19:49:00.000+02:00

A headline I recently saw on a newspaper placard whilst driving back from work here in Johannesburg:

"SA Economy Ahead Looks Perky"

Perky?!

I nearly drove into a lamppost as I fumed about that one.

How the hell can the economy of a country have a 'perky' outlook?!

Either the country's economy has a firm set of breasts, which I very much doubt, or this is one ridiculous (ab)use of a word.

According to dictionary.com:

perk·y /ˈpɜrki/

[pur-kee]
–adjective, perk·i·er, perk·i·est.

jaunty; cheerful; brisk; pert.

So, am I to assume that our local economy is 'jaunty', 'cheerful' and 'brisk'?

Was that the economy I saw walking happily down my street the other day, looking all perky? Jesus wept.

My hate for this type of 'creative' use of words knows no bounds. Yet I am assailed almost every day by newspaper and magazine editors/ writers/ pretentious twats who take words in the English language and then twist (read: defile, corrupt, mangle) them to suit their own lazy needs.

Oh, and by the way, the South African economy is anything but 'perky' at the moment. More like 'clunky'.

RANT: Arrogance Beyond the (Trans)Ocean

2011-04-03T18:56:00.003+02:00

At the centre of the ecological and PR nightmare that was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year was BP. It was all BP, BP, BP. But there were other guilty parties in that fiasco of gigantic proportions, one of which was the company leasing out the oil rig and all related equipment, etc, namely Transocean.

Today it emerged that Transocean's top executives received their biggest bonuses to date, to the tune of millions of dollars, on the basis that 2010 was the company's "Best Year in Safety"...yip, that's right, their best year in safety!

Wait, let me get this right - this from a company directly involved in an explosion that killed eleven people, nine of which were Transocean workers, and, thereafter, caused the largest environmental disaster in United States history? And they see fit to give their f*#@ing executives a raise on the basis of that type of performance in safety?!

The catchphrase underneath the corporate logo seems so apt: "Now nothing is beyond your reach". Well, certainly nothing is beyond the reach of a greedy Transocean executive, that's for sure

People may argue that the spill was primarily the issue, and that was an environmental disaster, not a safety one. But the spill was caused by the explosion on the oil rig, which, in turn, killed nine workers. That is most certainly a safety issue. And a safety f*#*-up. Of monumental proportions.

I'm sure the families of the nine men killed in the blast must be real thrilled that the executives at Transocean are getting a big fat pay bonus on the basis of their sterling safety work in 2010. Real thrilled.

There is absolutely no justification for this 'safety-based' performance bonus for these execs. In any way, shape or form.

If anything, it's just in unbelievably bad taste. And, yet again, proves just how arrogant, self-aggrandizing and woefully unethical corporations and their executive spawn can be.

Do these people have no shame?

Or do they hide behind the protective nothingness that is the corporation? Yes, that must be it. Yet again.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Israel, the April Fool

2011-04-01T23:58:00.002+02:00

Today it emerged that Israel's infamous band of thugs, Mossad, had kidnapped a Palestinian engineer in Kiev, Ukraine, on suspicion of 'ties to Hamas', and scurried him off back to the Land of Milk and (P)Honey.

That's correct: agents from one country abducted a person in another nation's territory, without the said 'receiving' nation's authorities or secret service even being aware of it.

The Ukrainians must be so chuffed with the Israelis.

And Israel had the cheek to openly admit to it today. Of course. Why shouldn't they? They're a lawless apartheid nation shielded by the United States; the big bully on the block. Their arrogance knows no bounds. Not to mention their chutzpah.

Listening to some of the media, it would seem like the 'fact' that he may (or may not, of course) have ties to Hamas does give Israel some justifiable 'reason' in all of this. You know - Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and Israel has every right to go around kidnapping and maiming and murdering Hamas leaders and supporters on the basis that they're all...well, terrorists. All to defend itself, of course.

Hang on a moment. This all sounds so terribly familiar to me. What could it be? Ah, yes. It's the exact same demented crap that was being spouted by the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980s, as agents of that amoral nation (into which I was born) also went around kidnapping and maiming and murdering members of another terrorist organisation - you know, the ANC. In other countries. All to defend itself, of course.

It's amazing how identical the modi operandi of these apartheid states truly are.

History really does repeat itself, does it not?

It being April 1st, it seemed so fitting that this year's April Fool should be none other than that most schizophrenic and amoral of contemporary nations, the apartheid state of Israel.

Do you get my point?

It Says It All...

2011-03-16T18:48:00.001+02:00

As a follow up to my last post regarding the rich, I thought the 'cat' chart showing American wealth distribution below was rather fitting:

Imagine - the fatcat gets even more of the pie in most other countries...

RANT: The Rich Get...More Vile

2011-03-16T18:47:00.001+02:00

It's churlish to bash on the rich. It seems a case of sour grapes, even somehow self-defeating. After all, it would be stupid to deny that money can be very seductive in what it can do for one's life. It buys you independence and gives you more options in life. Money gives you choices, no doubt about it.

Why the hell do you think I play the lottery every chance I get?!

I refuse to play the hypocrite and pretend that being wealthy wouldn't make my life better in more ways than one. Of course it would. I consider myself genuinely fortunate in that I'm not motivated by huge homes and fancy cars and private jets and wardrobes the size of small Central American countries. I never have been.

I don't want the billions. Or all the flash of conspicuous, gaudy, yucky wealth. But to have enough money to have have a home fully paid for, know that my mother will never again have to work a day in her life, have NO DEBT at all and never have to worry about money again - bliss.

But in this recession on the back of so much profligate stealing by uber-rich bankers and Wall Street types, the rich have only become more tasteless. A reminder of how flawed our money systems are and how so very much is for the benefit of so very few.

And so I come across an article today on Yahoo regarding a survey of rich Americans done by Fidelity Investments. According to the findings, most of the rich surveyed declare that one needs a minimum of $7-million in order to be 'rich'. Yip, six million bucks and you ain't yet 'rich'. Jeepers, talk about inflation!

And, the survey found, the rich continue to fret about money - the poor (rich) things. AND it seems the older they get, the more money they believe is necessary to be comfortably 'rich'! It seems the itch to be rich only gets worse with age.

So, yes, it seems the rich do get richer - not to mention more vile.

After all, who goes around pondering what it is to be 'rich' and frets about staying so obviously rich? And who feels comfortable enough to answer such ludicrous surveys about wealth in this day and age? Who are these people?

They are the cocooned, the pampered, the powerful 'other' who influence governments and make sure that governments bail them out when they get too greedy. Okay, that's mostly the super-rich to whom $7-million is really chump change, but you get my drift.

The words of Thomas Jefferson seem so pertinent here:

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Harsh words perhaps, but somehow strangely relevant when one reads surveys like this.

Do you get my point?