The Antisocial Socialist

Were I a more eloquent, or at least awake, blogger, I would write a very long post analyzing Hugo Chavez's triumphs and failures, and speculating on what his death means to both Latin America and the rest of the world in terms of socialism and resistance to the unsustainable and inhumane neoliberal economic order.

But I'm pretty burnt out at the moment so I'll say that while he made a lot of mistakes, particularly towards the end of his life, I had a lot of respect for the man and what he was trying to do in Venezuela, and I'm sad to see him go.

Also, fuck cancer.

Shorter Bush: Silly Latin Americans, thinking that you have self-determination and that you can elect any old leader you want. As soon as we're done freeing the shit out of the Middle East, we're coming for you.

Shorter Hugo Chavez: ( Trot now! )

In other sectarian news, the IWW resolution to adhere to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle failed by a narrow margin. That's just embarrassing. In the greater scheme of things, it doesn't matter all that much, given how small the Wobblies are, but it means that the organization that I'm part of and that I identify with the most, ideologically speaking, does not have its head screwed on straight at the moment.

Oh yes, and one other little thing. The U.S. just murdered 31 Somali civilians and hardly anyone's said a peep about it. (Hat tip: douglain.)

Everyone's sick of talking about the stupid cartoons (although I have a new-found confidence in gaybortion, which is way better than any of them and also has never caused a riot. So hah!), so let's talk about more interesting subjects.

Baby Godwin is a sad panda.

Rumsfeld compared Hugo Chavez to Hitler.
Then Chavez said that Bush was worse than Hitler.

[Poll #667317]

(Hat tip to roter_terror and springheel_jack.)

---

Also, OCAP and Uprising are doing joint movie nights and are looking for recommendations for movies to show. They must be fun (that means no didactic documentaries, kthnx) and political in some way. Until the spring, exceedingly long movies like The Battle of Algiers cannot be shown because Uprising has no heat.

La Haine, They Live!, Life and Debt and The Harder They Come have all been recommended, and I'm being told to quash any suggestions of Bread and Roses. (Heh.)

Personally, I recommend this political movie.

---

Marinetti thanks everyone for the birthday wishes and fealty. He is now passed out in the living room.

Hey guys, look up! I'm no longer friends only. I'm friends mostly. I'm going back and making old entries public again. I feel far more democratic that way. So we're down to a Yellow/Orange alert now. It doesn't quite look as dramatic as my last f/o banner, though.

Anyway, Bugmenot.com isn't letting me into the National Post today, which is too bad; it looks like they have some utterly hilarious articles today. The photo gracing the cover today was possibly the most unflattering picture of Hugo and Fidel they could possibly find. The headline: A NEW THREAT IN LATIN AMERICA--AND HE'S GOT OIL.

Um...yeah, the Venezuelans have oil. Always have. The only difference is that now they're allowed to use a bit of the money they get from selling the oil. OH TEH NOOOES!

The article went on to talk about How Chavez Became Like Castro (I'm not exaggerating). Apparently they're exactly the same (even though Chavez was democratically elected...repeatedly) because they both used to be baseball players or something. In other news, they both speak Spanish.*

There's that word again -- the favourite word of the neo-cons. Threat. Because as much as I like him, a sensible person would probably conclude that Chavez is pretty harmless as far as world leaders go. I mean, that Pat Robertson guy? A little unhinged and homicidal. But Chavez? You'd have to be doing some fancy fabrications to convince anyone that he's a danger to Canada. (Then again, the National Post isn't a Canadian paper; it's an American paper published in Canada.) Still, the Aspers, like their masters to the South, want you to be afraid of this fellow because he's promoting a so-far successful ideological and economic alternative to global American hegemony. They throw the T-bomb around with nothing to back it up, and probably no one will notice.

Among the other articles is the promising headline: Bush praises sacrifice of Idaho military mom. Apparently, haunted by Cindy Sheehan, Bush has gone and got himself his own bereaved military mom! E-points to anyone who can find out her name. Bonus e-points to the first person who can dig up evidence that she's crazy and/or anti-Semitic.

That's about it for today, I guess. I think I'm going to go watch Land of the Dead across the street and maybe call the 700 Club again. That last call was a blast.

* And thank God! Because I used to play baseball in third grade, and were it not for my monolingualism, I too could be the next populist left-wing Latin American leader.