HUMANS CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT ME

I read a blog post. I will not link to it here; its author does not deserve the recognition or the free advertising, but it was about the inherent falseness of the idea of female self-esteem. Apparently, women should have absolutely no good feelings about themselves beyond the bare minimum needed to “prevent them committing suicide” (interesting, it’s never been my self-esteem but rather my awareness of reality that makes me want to reach for the pills). He says self-esteem should be earned through accomplishment – a sentiment (the only one in the entire article) with which I can wholeheartedly agree. What is so truly baffling, though, is that he follows this statement with the automatic assumption that women do not or cannot accomplish anything worthy of respect or merit.

The author then delivers an underhanded remark about women “barely squeaking through” colleges with low admission standards and earning their “masters in puppetry”. Hardly. It was at this point that I stopped reading; the gentleman (and I use the term verrrry loosely) was clearly no longer presenting an argument but merely baiting female readers in the hopes that one would reply and he could call her a rabid lesbian or something of that nature. (Hmm, maybe that should be the title of this blog – Rabid Lesbian: I Will Bite You In The Leg. Well, it’s a working title).

Of course he was American; he was possessed of the incredible hubris that only the young white American heterosexual male can really pull off. He encompasses an enormous part of what I find distasteful about Americans (and I generalize, of course; I refer mostly to those who embrace the American ethos, not specifically its geographical inhabitants) and what I find distasteful about men’s rights activitists the world over. The rhetoric is always the same and perpetually ignores the fact that there is no evidence other than mere cultural construction that women are inherently inferior to men. Different, yes, but inferior, not in the slightest. I am not so much angered as I am saddened, to see how “education” and “enlightenment” are shaking out in the global West. Not well, it seems; perhaps the author would have been better off getting his masters of puppetry instead.

"BABY DOC" ONLY SOUNDS CUTE

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GUY UP TO?!
Jean-Claude Duvalier, aka Baby Doc, the younger half of the two-generation terror squad ruling Haiti from 1957 to 1986, showed up in Haiti this week.
Haiti needs a lot of things - medical supplies and doctors, fresh water sources, food, transportation, repairs to flooded roads and damaged infrastructure, effective cholera treatments. One thing they don't need is this clown pulling into town after 25 years of exile in France and announcing he wants to help.
I don't blame the Haitians in the slightest for welcoming Duvalier - apparently, fully half of the country is under the age of 33, meaning they have little to no memory of how insanely evil, corrupt and brutal the ham-fisted Duvalier regime really was. But let's have a brief recap: at the end of their reign of terror, the one-two knockout punch of Duvaliers Sr and Jr could add millions of dollars in embezzlement, the executions of thousands of political opponents, and the introduction of the tontons macoutes (a distinctly evil secret police force) to their resumes. And let's not forget their continued dealings in narcotics and body parts (!), or the repeated violations of the Constitution, or the vote-rigging, or that time when Daddy Doc rewrote the Lord's prayer to include himself.
Haiti, you just can't catch a break, can you?


YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG
Toronto police have taken a man accused of shooting at and firebombing a house into custody. The enterprising young fellow, Atanas Markov, decided to return with a gun after a deal (and Markov's subsequent attempt at extortion) went south at his business partner's house. He fired at the house (?!) and then at a car parked in the driveway. Still not content, this champion returned three days later with a couple of friends, who helped him throw Molotov cocktails at the house. The damage they did, however, was mostly broken glass; fortunately, the business partner and his wife and two kids were unharmed.
What have we learned here? Not only is Markov insane enough to firebomb a house, the utter lack of, you know, fire damage suggests he's not even GOOD at making Molotov cocktails. Come on, son. You're just disgracing the real arsonists around here.

THIS DISPLEASES ME.

Julian Assange is a terrorist.

No, he doesn't even deserve the name "terrorist". He's a sulky little boy, a thug, a back-alley blackmailer.
"Listen up, world. Do what I want, or there's going to be a lot of trouble!"

He distributed the entire, uncensored, WikiLeaks file to tens of thousands of people, with only an encryption key preventing those people from actually accessing the material. However, he says, should he be brought to trial for any of his assorted crimes, he'll reveal the encryption key, millions of pages of classified documents will be freely available, and diplomatic relations between every country in the world are all going to hell.

Assange claims he's using the WikiLeaks key as an "insurance policy". He also said, likely in the same breath, that he'll release this "thermonuclear device" if his demands aren't met.

Now, I'm all for government clarity and transparency, but these documents aren't just financial records and self-congratulatory Post-it notes transferred between Cabinet ministers over their latest tax-dollar rip-off - among hundreds of thousands of pages of sensitive material, there are classified military documents in that package, including information about current service members currently serving in missions across the globe. How can anyone justify releasing that kind of information all over the Internet? What kind of a monster decides that his escape from justice means that men and women who volunteered their lives to fight or keep peace overseas now get to have their troop positions and battle plans dished out to any private citizen with a CPU and a modem?!

And, here's the kicker - Assange isn't just trying to escape a rap for sedition or treason or whatever else you get charged with when you are a MAJOR ASSHOLE - he's trying to get out of rape charges - yes, he's using his status as founder and protector of WikiLeaks to avoid going to jail for sexually assaulting women, which is not only utterly heinous but also a crime totally unrelated to him publishing tons of really important government shit.

When someone hauls this idiot out of the Swedish woods, feel free to bring him on over to my place and I'll drop him with an M15 carbine - thanks to WikiLeaks, I'll know where to pick one up from my friendly local armed forces personnel!