In New Delhi Sport Matters, People Donât.
In the Commonwealth, which is to say the countries which at one time were part of a certain empire on which the sun never set, we have the habit of every four years wasting a massive amount of money on a thing called The Commonwealth Games â think Olympics with all the big threats like the U.S and China eliminated and youâll have the right picture.
Not surprisingly the event is held in one of the participating countries, and this year the task fell to the poor bastards in the Indian capital of New Delhi.
This in itself is offensive, in that the ruling elite of such a poor country is being allowed to waste on a mere entertainment money which could instead be put into helping the people starving in its over crowded streets.
But to make matters worse, the authorities have decided to lie to the rest of the world by hiding the cityâs poor.
Not only are the fetid shanties in which Delhiâs poor are forced to live being hidden from view by brightly colored facades, but beggars â 70% of which are male and 30 % of which are younger than 18 years of age â are being rounded up, packed into trucks, driven outside the city and told to not come back until the games are over!
The authorities deny this of course, but places that usually teem with hundreds of beggars are now seeing only a handful. And to buy the authoritiesâ take on the situation one would have to believe that Delhiâs poor are so stupid as to decide that rather than stay at home and cash in on the influx of middle class Indians and well-heeled foreigners, it is instead time to take a holiday in the provinces!
Some of these people have been put into shelters, but according to activists Delhi simply does not have enough shelters to house more than a fraction of the cityâs poor. On top of this, several slums have been demolished in the lead up to the games, which means that even if the poor are allowed to return once the middle class and the rich have had their fun, they will be facing even worse conditions than before.
India is not a welfare state in which these people can go out and collect a government benefit that affords them a packet of noodles and a leaky tenement. For these people, you beg or you donât eat. But thatâs just how it is, isnât it? In India as elsewhere, the rich get to party down while the poor get to starve to death in a cardboard box.
More here.
Witch! Witch!
Well, well, it looks as if devout Christian and anti-wanking crusader Christine OâDonell has held beliefs even more questionable than her current ones about the Angry Old Man In The Sky.
On Bill Maherâs old show âPolitically Incorrectâ the semi-literate OâDonnel informs us that she âdabbled into (sic) witchcraftâ and even held a midnight picnic on a satanic altar! Of course what witches and Satan have to do with one another is anyoneâs guess, but one canât expect much from her ilkâŠ
Incidentally, I believe that the man sitting next to her is gay horror writer Clive Barker, and the other woman looks like Poppy Z Brite, a New Orleans horror writer who once described herself as a gay man trapped in a womanâs body!
Yet who comes across as the weirdo? The Christian girl! Makes you wonder just how much freakiness lies behind the Republicansâ Rockwellian façade, donât it?
Now, I donât think this teenage experimentation says much about OâDonellâs character, nor do I think it calls her current beliefs into question, but it sure is funny! I especially like her insistence that she didnât join a coven, having as it does shades of Bill Clintonâs claims that he may have smoked pot, but he never actually inhaled…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iWRw3oZdg4[/youtube]
Boy Banned from U.S for Hurting Obamaâs feelings?
17 year old British boy Luke Angel has been banned from the U.S for the rest of his life (heâll be allowed to apply for permanent residency once heâs dead) for sending a vitriolic email to the false messiah currently acting as a front for Americaâs corporate kingpins.
The boy in question admits to calling Obama a prick, though according to a police spokesman the letter did also contain âthreatening languageâ.
But given that the offending missive was written by a kid who was drunk at the time, unless it outlined a sophisticated Al Qaeda backed plan to put nitroglycerine in Obamaâs favorite basketball, the reaction seems both overdone and the kind of harsh treatment reserved for the male of the species â even when heâs just a stupid kid with a big mouth.
The U.S authorities are refusing to give us the details of the case as we are only proles, but Joanne Ferreira from the Department of Homeland Security did say that there are about 60 reasons why a person can be banned.
She didnât tell us what those 60 reasons are but apparently political dissent is now one of them. Or to be more serious, it may be on its way to becoming one of them. If the world accepts what may be a case of punishing political dissent, it will be easier in the future for the U.S to do this in a case that is definitely a matter of punishing political dissent.
Bit by bit, thatâs how you boil a frog.
More here.