Here is an excellent op-ed piece on the heroism of the student movement leaders in Venezuela:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30krauze.html?ex=1356670800&en=2e78eb83a399ff2d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Monday, December 31, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
2007 Baby's First X-mas
I am currently in the small town where I grew up, which is in sunny SW Florida. Here, bumperstickers prominently placed on cars admonish me to "KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS," roadside advertisements exclaim "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" and a visit to TARGET or the Olive Garden turns into a political battle for the soul of America as my pleasantly non-committal "Happy Holidays" is met with an emphatic "MERRY CHRISTMAS!"
Besides the quaint reactionary politics laced (like poison) with fanatical holiday flavor, I enjoy the local news, such as the full-page photo spread "2007 Baby's First Christmas!" (presumably all of the babies are Christian? WTF?!?!?) And though usually I find some of my favorite unique names in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, among telenovela characters or actors, etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find the following:
Dalton Lee
Makayla
Kadie
Camp Ross (as my sister cleverly noted, this is a name that only a drag queen should have)
Kyla
Kaleem Ta'Ree
DaQuan LaShawn
Fabulous.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Fever
The article below (forwarded by one of my favorite readers) about the spread of formerly unknown "tropical mosquito-borne" disesases in Italy reminds me of Somerset Maugham's "The Painted Veil" where "noble" technologically-advanced British risk their lives in Cholera-ravaged 1920s China. The characters however express a violently racist disdain and disgust towards the poor villagers throught the text. (In the movie, however, the narrative was cleaned up and turned into a banal Hollywood love story.) Below, the New York Times finally realizes that so-called tropical diseases are worrisome. Because they are affecting wealthy Italians. The story raises the possibility that "immigration, globalization and global warming" have led to the Europeans' succumbing to these sinister and exotic illnesess. It is only a problem when the white people get ill, because until now, I haven't read articles about these diseases in the paper. And dengue fever in particular is as common as the flu in PR - most of my family members have suffered from dengue fever, but of course, when the Italians get it, it's a crisis!!!!!
I love how globalization is only framed in terms of possible disadvantages to Westerners but no mention is made about its effects on the rest of the world. And though the journalist tries to be "fair and balanced" by speculating about other possible causes, the impression left on the reader is that non-white or non-Western people are impure, polluted, agents of contagion, and that through contact with them either through immigration or travel, diseases spread. These tropes go back to the Bubonic Plague I am sure, definitely if you read Elaine Showalter's book on the fin de siecle and syphillis, or take a look at the responses to the AIDS crisis and more recently Bird Flu, you can find similar types of responses. I think there is more in common with the last cases, given the racialized terms used to describe the alleged agents of contagion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 23, 2007
As Earth Warms Up, Tropical Virus Moves to Italy
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.
“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”
By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.
People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.
“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”
Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.
Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.
“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”
The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.
And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.
“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”
Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”
It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.
“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”
August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.
“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”
Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)
From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.
They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.
Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.
The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.
“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”
Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”
Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.
By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.
By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.
“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.
Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.
But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.
Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.
Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.
But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.
Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.
From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.
But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.
With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/europe/23virus.html?ex=1356066000&en=ca727de283557522&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
I love how globalization is only framed in terms of possible disadvantages to Westerners but no mention is made about its effects on the rest of the world. And though the journalist tries to be "fair and balanced" by speculating about other possible causes, the impression left on the reader is that non-white or non-Western people are impure, polluted, agents of contagion, and that through contact with them either through immigration or travel, diseases spread. These tropes go back to the Bubonic Plague I am sure, definitely if you read Elaine Showalter's book on the fin de siecle and syphillis, or take a look at the responses to the AIDS crisis and more recently Bird Flu, you can find similar types of responses. I think there is more in common with the last cases, given the racialized terms used to describe the alleged agents of contagion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 23, 2007
As Earth Warms Up, Tropical Virus Moves to Italy
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.
“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”
By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.
People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.
“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”
Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.
Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.
“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”
The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.
And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.
“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”
Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”
It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.
“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”
August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.
“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”
Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)
From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.
They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.
Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.
The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.
“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”
Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”
Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.
By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.
By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.
“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.
Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.
But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.
Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.
Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.
But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.
Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.
From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.
But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.
With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/europe/23virus.html?ex=1356066000&en=ca727de283557522&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Thursday, December 20, 2007
BREAKING NEWS - Ingrid Marie did not lie!
I'd like to send a shout out to my fellow Boricua Pageantry Fan, who shared this REUTERS news article first thing this morning. This is the very same friend that I literally watch Miss Universe with over the telephone - yes, sadly she lives across the freaking country, so we swap staccato bursts of bitchery during commerical breaks. Yet this very friend says I should not have a blog because I need to write my (academic) book instead. Here's to you, mami chula!:
I don't know what I love most about this story, the fact that it made REUTERS, the names of the police personnel, Eddie, Ivonne, etc., the quotes at the end about how people are just "fanatical" and "passionate" about pageantry? I am just glad our girl Ingrid Marie has been vindicated, and, if all goes well, we will wipe the floor with Venezuela at Miss Universe!!
_________________________________________
Probe: Beauty queen clothes were sprayed
By LILLIAM IRIZARRY, Associated Press Writer Wed Dec 19, 3:04 PM ET
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After a flurry of accusations and skepticism, an exhaustive investigation has determined that someone did try to sabotage a beauty contestant's bid for the Miss Puerto Rico Universe by dousing her garments with pepper spray, police said Wednesday.
The attempt failed because Ingrid Marie Rivera maintained her composure while appearing before judges and cameras, then went backstage to remove her clothes and apply ice bags to her swollen and splotched face and body. She went on to win the crown last month.
Police will present the results of their three-week-long investigation to the district attorney, who will decide whether to file charges against the suspect, a volunteer at the pageant, said San Juan police detective Ivonne Reyes. Reyes refused to identify the volunteer or discuss a possible motive.
A black gown and the bathing suit that Rivera wore during the competition's final round tested positive for pepper spray, validating her claims of sabotage, police said. Allegations of sabotage were earlier questioned when another dress and a makeup brush tested negative for pepper spray.
"Miss Puerto Rico Universe was speaking the truth. She was being sincere about the allegations," Lt. Eddie Hernandez, a San Juan police spokesman, said Wednesday.
Extensive interviews led police to focus their suspicions on the volunteer and not a rival contestant, Hernandez said, adding that the pepper spray was likely applied when contestants and their assistants left the changing room. Five pageant officials who handled the clothes also were affected by the spray, he said.
About five volunteers worked during the competition, said pageant director Magali Febles, adding that organizers will screen volunteers more carefully because "there are some people who are very fanatical" about the contestants.
"We generate a lot of passion," she added.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Ingrid Marie Has Some Esplainin To Do.../Miss Puerto Rico...Petite?
She seems very much on the defensive...and is offering to take a polygraph. Stay tuned.
Luis Santiago author of a guide to pageantry
PETITE GUIDE TO PAGEANTRY:
By the way, during my brief visit to the Island I was lucky to get a few gems in the El Nuevo Dia newspaper including an article about Luis Santiago, Producer of Miss Puerto Rico Petite (aren't most Misses in PR petite, like me, Petite Maoiste?) and Miss Puerto Rico Teen (love how this is all in English?!) published a "Guia Completa de competencia y entrenamiento para certamenes de belleza" (only $49.95!) Sadly I never made it to BORDERS in Plaza Las Americas - the largest mall in Latin America- so I don't have a copy of this invaluable guide to Pageantry to which I can refer. Santiago is the Evil Genius behind Ingrid Marie's Meteoric Rise. According to the article he has also trained Queens like Joyceline Montero, Yizette Cifredo and Roselyn Sanchez. If I were not in the arts, I think I would have become an anthropologist and done a dissertation on naming practices in Puerto Rico. Awesome. And in the same newspaper's social section called "MAGACIN" (the "i" of course has an accent) I found yet more poetic nomenclature just two of my favorites are YAMIL and YARANIKS (the latter sounds like a potentially lethal type of sushi).
Ingrid Marie's Pageantry Mentor, Santiago's resume is as follows, he helped Ingrid Marie win Miss Global Queen, and three of his other Puerto Rican pageantry proteges also won at Miss Global Teen, and Miss Global Petite. This must-read pageantry bible gives tips on potential questions, pageantry walk, how to choose hair and makeup, and "Pensamientos para Jesus" as well as "Pensamientos para una reina" for inspirational reading.
MISS AMERICA: REALITY CHECK
Now I have learned that on January 4, TLC is launching a Reality TV series called "Miss America: Reality Check" that involves behind-the-scenes make-overs of misses. I may just have to watch this, but it could easily become a pageantry addiction.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Chavez drags Venezuela backwards part II
According to local and international media, Hugo Chavez is blocking the publication of newspapers critical of his regime, see below. Other related news include the soaring inflation, which has led to scarcity of basic food items like milk, and now, toilet paper. So here, we get ridiculously wealthy museum patrons endowing a (formerly radical alternative) museum's new building by having the "named bathroom" (see post below) while in Venezuela, people cannot afford to buy toilet paper.
By Fabiola Sanchez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:22 p.m. December 11, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela – A newspaper critical of President Hugo Chavez's government said Tuesday it is being forced to stop printing because officials have failed to authorize U.S. dollars it needs to buy newsprint. Publisher and editor David Natera said the government has a clear political motivation for not cooperating with his regional daily, Correo del Caroni, which has long taken a critical stance.
The paper in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz said its print edition will not be published Wednesday because of the lack of newsprint, though it will continue to post news to its Web site. Chavez's government imposed currency exchange controls in 2003, requiring Venezuelans and companies to request state authorization to trade local currency for dollars at the official rate – which holds the Venezuelan bolivar steady at nearly three times the black-market rate.
The head of the government commission that handles requests for dollars acknowledged on Tuesday that there had been delays in processing applications. Manuel Barroso blamed computer problems, but he did not address the newspaper's situation. Natera, who is also a leader among Venezuelan newspaper publishers and has repeatedly accused the government of trying to push aside critical news media, said, “This regime does not allow dissidence,”
An official at Venezuela's information ministry said no response was immediately available. Chavez's government has consistently denied violating press freedoms, noting that most news outlets remain in private hands and many newspapers and radio stations take an anti-Chavez line. Natera said he believes the government is getting back at him for reports he has prepared for the Inter American Press Association warning of threats to press freedom.
The Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders expressed concern, calling on Barroso to “do what is necessary to get things moving and to allow the Correo del Caroni to resume publishing.”“We hope that exchange controls, like the allocation of state advertising, has not been turned into a way of penalizing publications for their editorial policies,” the group said in a statement.
Natera said three other regional newspapers are facing a similar shortage of newsprint and have only a few weeks' worth in stock because they have been unable to obtain dollars through the government to buy more.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20071211-1222-venezuela-newspaper.html
By Fabiola Sanchez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:22 p.m. December 11, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela – A newspaper critical of President Hugo Chavez's government said Tuesday it is being forced to stop printing because officials have failed to authorize U.S. dollars it needs to buy newsprint. Publisher and editor David Natera said the government has a clear political motivation for not cooperating with his regional daily, Correo del Caroni, which has long taken a critical stance.
The paper in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz said its print edition will not be published Wednesday because of the lack of newsprint, though it will continue to post news to its Web site. Chavez's government imposed currency exchange controls in 2003, requiring Venezuelans and companies to request state authorization to trade local currency for dollars at the official rate – which holds the Venezuelan bolivar steady at nearly three times the black-market rate.
The head of the government commission that handles requests for dollars acknowledged on Tuesday that there had been delays in processing applications. Manuel Barroso blamed computer problems, but he did not address the newspaper's situation. Natera, who is also a leader among Venezuelan newspaper publishers and has repeatedly accused the government of trying to push aside critical news media, said, “This regime does not allow dissidence,”
An official at Venezuela's information ministry said no response was immediately available. Chavez's government has consistently denied violating press freedoms, noting that most news outlets remain in private hands and many newspapers and radio stations take an anti-Chavez line. Natera said he believes the government is getting back at him for reports he has prepared for the Inter American Press Association warning of threats to press freedom.
The Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders expressed concern, calling on Barroso to “do what is necessary to get things moving and to allow the Correo del Caroni to resume publishing.”“We hope that exchange controls, like the allocation of state advertising, has not been turned into a way of penalizing publications for their editorial policies,” the group said in a statement.
Natera said three other regional newspapers are facing a similar shortage of newsprint and have only a few weeks' worth in stock because they have been unable to obtain dollars through the government to buy more.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20071211-1222-venezuela-newspaper.html
Monday, December 10, 2007
Cultural Revolution Tchotchkes
Since I got onto the subject [see post immediately below this] of the talking (or more accurately, delusionally ranting) Hugo Chavez doll, I had to go back to the phenomena of collecting schlock related to sinister murderous dictators, in this case Mao. There is at least one site where one can pay up to hundreds of dollars to buy original or reproduction porcelains depicting the leader, his subordinates and revolutionary characters, many of them related to the Cultural Revolution period. Despite the political incorrectness of what I am about to say, I admit that I happen to be attracted to them for their hideously tastelessly realistic and rhetorical value, not to mention their lurid colors. It's Communist Lladro! In many of these figures, Mao looks a bit like a drag queen wearing red lipstick. The question is, given my family history, would I be offended if I went to somebody's house and they had a bust of Franco displayed knowingly as campy kitsch memorabilia?
this is the site that sells the figurines:
http://www.1930shanghai.com/catalog.html
If you want to know about the iconography of Mao, how contemporary people in China view it, and the ways in which contemporary artists reinterpret this imagery, read this amazing article "Personal Mao" by an expert on the subject, Francesca Dal Lago:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_2_58/ai_55427197/pg_1
Chavez makes Venezuela go even further backwards....
The megalomanical and deluded dictator Hugo Chavez is at it again, derailed by the crushing defeat of his attempt to turn Venezuela into a "Socialist" dictatorship, now he is literally micro-managing people's lives by turning the clock back on his countrymen, thus interfering with every aspect of their lives. Of course he has already implemented many policies that have done far more damage, and the food shortages are just one example of this. People have to be subjected to his bizarre rambling cadenas that go on for hours and pre-empt regularly-scheduled programming on TV and radio, sometimes he even sings, other times he makes threats of violence. Now he is convinced that changing the clocks back one half hour will make a revolutionary change in the "working people's" lives but in fact it is creating a huge hassle. (see below) This half-hour change means that he isn't on the same time zone as the USA.
But if you think this initiative is deluded and narcissistic, check this out - be warned some of the people in the video, if you understand Spanish, are actually saying that children love Chavez and are attracted by the doll!!! This reminds me of the ubiquitous Mao figurines - my personal faves are the glow in the dark plastic ones, the great leader was always watching!
_________________________________________________________________
Venezuelans Reset Clocks With Chavez's New Time Zone (Update1)
By Matthew Walter
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aBSMuIWEBYk0&refer=latin_america
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelans began their work week at a new hour after President Hugo Chavez ordered clocks set back, creating a time zone unique to the South American country.
Chavez says setting clocks back half an hour will allow school children to wake up with the sun and ease poor Venezuelans' pre-dawn commute. Since the decree's publication on Nov. 27, businesses have struggled to update time-sensitive computer systems.
Chavez, who says time zones were created by ``imperialists,'' has also changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and redesigned its coat of arms and national flag in his bid to create a ``21st century socialist'' society. Some Venezuelans say the time change is part of Chavez's drive to put his mark on every aspect of the country's national identity.
``It's a political whim,'' said Yanitza Lopez, 27, an accountant for a cosmetics company in Caracas. ``It's not going to make any difference for any kids.''
Airlines and travel agencies were still calling and e- mailed passengers last week to notify them about flight changes, and the Caracas stock exchange had to update its software to ensure trades ran smoothly today.
``The time change is going to affect many flights, and lots of airlines still haven't changed their timetables,'' said Roberto Pulido, country manager for Copa Airlines and president of Venezuela's airline association. ``This is an additional cost, because we've had to update all of our reservation systems.''
Authority
Venezuela joins a handful of countries, including India, Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka that don't set their time in increments of one hour from Greenwich Mean Time.
``This affects even the biological functioning of the body,'' the president said yesterday, according to the state news wire. ``It's scientifically proven.
Local media spent the past week focusing on the aftermath of a Dec. 2 national referendum, in which voters rejected the president's plan to overhaul the constitution to allow him to run for re-election indefinitely, contributing to confusion about yesterday's change.
Chavez has changed the start date for the new time zone at least once, and in a national address he mistakenly said the plan was to turn clocks forward by half an hour.
``I don't really understand the point, but nothing with this president surprises me,'' said Rafael Sucre, 39, a doctor, as he exited a subway station last week in the Chacao commercial district of the nation's capital, Caracas.
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Walter in Caracas at mwalter4@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: December 10, 2007 08:30 EST
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Puerto Ricans - cheap labor with US Passports!
above: images from the Puerto Rican Tourism Company website, generic tropical beachscape and the logo they've designed to reinforce their slogan "US passport not required"
I see an ironic parallel between the recent efforts made by US meat-packing plants to recruit Island-based Puerto Ricans to replace deported or jailed undocumented immigrants and the Puerto Rico Tourism Company's latest campaign. (see below for article on the meat-packing plants) The latter attempt to rebrand the Island starts with the catchy slogan "EXPLORE BEYOND THE SHORE" but what particularly fascinated me when I recently saw a typically sterotypical commecial filled with lush tropical foliage, scantily clad natives dancing, carnival festivities and pale tourists lounging poolside is that at the bottom right I read: US PASSPORT NOT REQUIRED.
So for the US citizen no passport is required to travel to the island to enjoy hedonism and escape, and for the colonial US subject residing in the Island, a passport IS required to slave away in unhealthy and grim conditions in a meat-packing company. The fact that islanders cannot earn a decent wage at home, thanks to years of "management" of and alterations to, its economy to better suit US interests, so they have to migrate to the so-called Mainland especially beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, is probably unknown to the average American who wants to avoid post-9/11 visa and passport hassles. Lest we forget, even Bush the Second didn't have a passport prior to becoming President. Who needs to travel abroad when we have everything we want right here?
"US dollars accepted" the PR Tourism Company trumpets, and "Just a short hop away." The fact that US citizens would have to be TOLD that this about their own colony which they invaded in 1898 is still shocking for me to contemplate. Only people in the US would be so uneducated that they would not know about their own colonial territory.
An even deeper irony is the fact that thanks to "Operation Bootstrap" launched in 1947 Puerto Rico's economy shifted from agrarian to industrial and manufacturing, and of course tourism is 7 % of its income. Then pharmaceutical plants, garment factories and the like set up shop on the Island, enjoying its cheap labor, US federal tax breaks while polluting the land and in the case of pharmaceuticals using locals as guinea pigs. Until NAFTA and globalization, when outsourcing to other less-developed areas became more profitable and then our colonial status and federal laws made using the locals as cheap labor less attractive.
So thanks to the backlash against undocumente workers, US companies remember that they have poor unemployed citizens in a nearby colony, again.
This is the 411 on the Island, according to the CIA and then the PR Tourism Company-
The CIA blurb is PRICELESS especially the section about the racial make-up: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/rq.html
PR Tourism Company: http://www.gotopuertorico.com/tourism-puerto-rico.php
__________________________
From National Public Radio
Nation
Meat Processors Look to Puerto Rico for Workers
by Jennifer Ludden
Morning Edition, December 6, 2007 ·
A year ago, immigration agents arrested more than 1,200 illegal workers at Swift meat-packing plants in six states.
The arrests set off a debate about whether immigrants take the grueling jobs away from Americans. Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter said last summer that the day after the raids, Americans were lined up to get their $18-an-hour jobs back.
In reality, the meat-packing plants pay an average hourly rate of $11 or $12 — and no one is lining up to work there.
Many plants, even those that were not raided, must still recruit heavily for legal workers.
In July, a Cargill plant in Beardstown, Ill., began running advertisements in Puerto Rico's capital city, San Juan.
Officials then flew over to conduct interviews there and in four other towns.
Andrea Agosto heard about the jobs and was among the first group of Puerto Ricans that Cargill flew to its pork-processing plant in August.
"It was for a change and for a better life for my three children," she says.
Agosto has doubled her salary.
Puerto Ricans Settle in Illinois
Maria Clayton had been the Beardstown plant's only Puerto Rican employee. She has been shuttling back and forth to the airport to pick up the new arrivals and help them get settled. So far, 50 people have made the trip.
Clayton says even the drive from the airport through Illinois' rural corn and bean country is something of a culture shock.
"Last night, I picked up two people, and they were amazed: 'Oh, my God, it's pitch black, it's pitch black. This is so far, are we there yet?' "
Clayton says they all ask, "What do you do for fun?" She tells them there isn't much to do. "But I always tell them, 'You know, if you want to change (your) life, and you want to save money (and) feel safe — this is a good place to be.' "
Cargill spokesman Mark Klein says the company has long had to recruit outside its plants' locations and targets places with high unemployment. Puerto Ricans make good candidates because they are U.S. citizens and many have experience in the industry.
"What interested us about Puerto Rico was there was a pork plant in Corozal that had closed a while back, and we wanted to hire people that had meat experience," Klein says. He says he does not think any of his competitors know that, but he expects word to get around.
Mark Grey, who studies the meat-packing industry at the University of Northern Iowa, says there is a premium on finding legal workers because of the crackdown on illegal immigrants.
"A lot of people in the industry have told me that they're running scared. They've looked at the potential for they, themselves, to become arrested — the managers, the recruiters, everyone else," Grey says.
Grey says the industry is doing more to weed out illegal workers, but that cuts into a thin profit margin of 1 percent to 3 percent. To make money, you need to cut up a lot of animals, and that takes a lot of people, he says.
Grey says most of the Americans who lined up to get meat-industry jobs after the Swift raids never got out of training, or they got to the floor and lasted just a few hours — not days.
Difficult Transition
In Beardstown, the transition for the new Puerto Rican workers has not been all smooth.
Shelly Heideman, who organizes aid for immigrants through the Elizabeth Ann Seton Program, says she has had to expand her efforts to secure donations because the incoming Puerto Ricans need so much.
"First of all, they said (they need) winter clothing, especially for their children," she says. They also need furnishings, pots and pans, linens, towels, sheets, blankets and almost anything you need to establish a home, Heideman says.
Agosto says a couple of the other Puerto Rican workers who came with her in August have already gone back.
"They didn't like the work, and it's so cold inside the factory. We weren't really prepared for that," she says.
But Agosto says it is worth it for her. She recently brought one son over from Puerto Rico, and he plans to start work at the Cargill plant in January. She hopes to bring her two other children next summer.
_______________
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Charo - The Greatest Spanish Entertainer of the 20th Century and Andy Warhol The Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century
Charo Baeza, fiery flamenco guitarrist, trained with Andres Segovia, was discovered by band leader Xavier Cugat in the 1960s and launched to international stardom in the 1970s thanks to fabulous records featuring her Spanish flamenco guitar meets 1970s disco stylings meets easy listening. She appeared in talk shows, charming Carson et al with her heavy Ejpaneeesh Akzent, big blond hair toss, plunging necklines, and lukewarm casino/stripper/vedette choreographies. Her signature phrase, understandable in any language: CUCHI CUCHI.
My father, whose accent is in fact similar to hers, was convinced that SHE was faking it to charm the Americans. In any event, for me it was a revelation to see a Spaniard, any Spaniard on American TV growing up in here in the late 70s and early 80s. Her fame was cemented thanks to a recurring role as APRIL on The Love Boat. She was a demure secretary suddently thrust into the limelight when, as Julie frantically tried to find a substitute for the shipboard disco's entertainment (this is of course, on those rare episodes where Ethel Merman wasn't a guest), she shed her glasses and Dress for Success garb and scantily clad in sequins shook her big blond mane and her booty. Her guitar-shaped body was featured in one album cover, where, nude, she was perfectly "clothed" by her Spanish guitar, held close to her chest.
In the late 1970s, I was a child visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras and both my dad and I were super bummed out when Charo had to cancel her appearance in the parade due to a chest cold. Fortunately, she resurfaced on The Surreal Life and the GEICO commercial and you can check out her fabulous website: http://www.charo.com . She is still producing records, by the way.
And I am NOT kidding about Ethel Merman, to wit:
However, possibly the GREATEST moment in the Love Boat's history is the Andy Warhol cameo, which for me had been the Holy Grail of TV watching and thanks to you tube and google, here it is!!!!!
www.DICKIPEDIA.org - AWESOME SITE!!!!!!
Below is the entry for Donald Trump from www.dickipedia.org.
Honestly, I don't know how I lived life without this site for almost 40 years. It is the most awesome thing. Ever. There are of course a plethora of dicks to choose running the gamut from the Axis of Dick Evil: Ronald Reagan, Cheney etc. to entertainers like Tucker Carlson and David Blaine (trivia: his mom, like me, is half Spanish/half Puerto Rican and his dad is Jewish, though this should in theory be a dreamy combo, something went terribly wrong, but go to the site and see for yourself!), and historical figures like the Pilgrims.
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, real estate developer, television personality, author and dick.
Contents
1 Overview and business
2 Career
3 Family
4 Feuds
5 Trivia
Overview and business
Trump rose to fame as a builder and real-estate developer. His buildings are known for their aesthetic touches commonly considered “classy” in many parts of the dick community. They feature gold fixtures, gold windows, gold signs and gold marble. Trump really likes gold.
About his first signature skyscraper, The Trump Tower, he said, “When people see the beautiful marble in Trump Tower, they usually have no idea what I went through personally to achieve the end result. No one cares about the blood, sweat, and tears that art or beauty require.”
Even for a dick, Trump is widely considered to be a braggart with an outsized and unwarranted opinion of himself and his talents. This is thought to be reason for the common theme linking the names of his many properties and businesses. They include:
• Trump Palace
• Trump Parc
• Trump Park Avenue
• Trump Tower
• Trump World Tower
• Trump Star Tower
• Trump Plaza
• Trump Grande
• Trump Place
• Trump Taj Mahal
• Trump Marina
• Trump Casino
• Trump Island Villas
• Trump Elite Tower
• Trump Tower Variations
• Trump Ice bottled water
• Trump Vodka
• Trump Shuttle
• Trump Golf
• Trump Magazine
• Trump Cologne for Men
• The Donald J. Trump Signature Men’s Collection
Trump considers himself the consummate dealmaker. “Deals are my art form,” he has written, “other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.” That, and having sexual intercourse with curiously "mannish" women.
Career
Trump portrays himself as a self-made man, but, in fact, he started his career at his father's successful real-estate company, the Trump Organization. While it is true that since then he has been successful in finding other wealthy dicks to buy apartments and condos in his many dick buildings, he is not as successful or as wealthy as he portrays himself to be.
In 2005, the journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, a staff writer for The New York Times, published the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.” In the book O’Brien claimed that Trump was not, as he claims, a billionaire, and worth only $250 million. Trump filed suit against O’Brien for “libel” in 2006. The suit is still pending.
Not in dispute is the fact that Trump’s businesses have been in and out of bankruptcy court since the early 1990’s. In 1991, The Taj Mahal Casino, which Trump financed largely with high-interest junk bonds, was forced into bankruptcy. In 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel was forced to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan after being unable to meet it dept payments. In 2004, Trump Hotels was also forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. About that bankruptcy he said, “I don't think it's a failure, it's a success." This confusion with opposites is considered by many to be a possible explanation for his taste in women.
In 2004, Trump became the Executive Producer of the NBC show “The Apprentice,” a reality show in which contestants vie to see who is the biggest dick, as judged by Trump. Participants are dismissed from the show with the signature phrase, “You’re fired,” which Trump has tried to trademark. In 2007, ratings were down significantly from 2006, and the show was last among the networks in its timeslot. Perhaps this is because all of the women on the show, instead of competing to win, are focusing their energies on having sex with Trump: “All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me -- consciously or unconsciously,” said Trump. “That's to be expected.”
Family
In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelnickova, whom he also branded with the “Trump” name. Ivana, a Czechoslovakian peroxide blond with a penchant for plastic surgery and international playboy wastrels, nicknamed Trump “The Donald.” They had three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka (sic) and Eric. Ivanka later claimed to be a “fashion model.”
Though Ivana was also a dick, and shared The Donald’s love of the dick aesthetic, it was not enough to keep the marriage together. In the early 1990’s, Trump began having sexual intercourse with a woman named Marla Maples. She was an “actress,” because she had appeared in a movie called “Maximum Overdrive,” in which she played a character named “2nd Woman.” Ivana filed for divorce shortly after, and Trump and Maples were married in 1993.
Though Trump was unsuccessful in branding Maples with the Trump name, he was able to inseminate her. In 1993, Maples gave birth to Trump’s fourth dick progeny, “Tiffany” (sic). Trump and Maples divorced in 1999.
Trump soon started dating Melanie Knauss, a Slovenian woman who looks like a Slovenian man. She/He became Trump new trophy wife in 2004. She is seven years older than Donald Trump, Jr. It is known that she allowed the aging Trump, who has unnaturally-colored orange hair styled in a bizarre comb-over, to penetrate her at least once, as she gave birth to Trump’s fifth dick offspring, Barron (sic) William Trump, in 2006.
About Barron, Trump had this to say in 2007: "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent -- all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur, and most importantly, hopefully he's smart because smart is really the ingredient,"
Feuds
In the 1980’s Spy Magazine, edited by Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson, dubbed Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian.” In 2006, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Spy, Trump was asked about the moniker. Trump’s reply, which he has had 25 years to think about, was, in the opinion of many, as classy as the gold marble in Trump Tower: “In fact, my fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” It is presumed he is talking about his penis.
In 2006 and 2007, Trump was engaged in a feud with Rosie O’Donnell, former co-host of the talk show "The View." On the show O’Donnell claimed that Trump orchestrated a controversy with the Miss Universe pageant, which he owns, in order to generate publicity for the season premier of “The Apprentice.” Trump's reply was no less trenchant than his retort to Carter and Anderson, calling O’Donnell “fat,” a “slob,” and an “animal,” “very unattractive,” and “a pigface.” He then claimed “I never went bankrupt” and threatened that either he or one of “his friends” would soon “steal” the openly-gay O’Donnell’s girlfriend away. Given Trump's relationships with Ivana Trump and Melanie Knauss, this was not considered to be an idle threat.
Trivia
In the 1980’s Trump retained the legal services of Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, closeted self-hating homosexual and a symbol of pure evil. Their meetings are generally considered to be some of the few times in which Trump has not been the worst person in the room.
Dickipedia.org Home
Dickipedia is a production of 236.com
Honestly, I don't know how I lived life without this site for almost 40 years. It is the most awesome thing. Ever. There are of course a plethora of dicks to choose running the gamut from the Axis of Dick Evil: Ronald Reagan, Cheney etc. to entertainers like Tucker Carlson and David Blaine (trivia: his mom, like me, is half Spanish/half Puerto Rican and his dad is Jewish, though this should in theory be a dreamy combo, something went terribly wrong, but go to the site and see for yourself!), and historical figures like the Pilgrims.
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, real estate developer, television personality, author and dick.
Contents
1 Overview and business
2 Career
3 Family
4 Feuds
5 Trivia
Overview and business
Trump rose to fame as a builder and real-estate developer. His buildings are known for their aesthetic touches commonly considered “classy” in many parts of the dick community. They feature gold fixtures, gold windows, gold signs and gold marble. Trump really likes gold.
About his first signature skyscraper, The Trump Tower, he said, “When people see the beautiful marble in Trump Tower, they usually have no idea what I went through personally to achieve the end result. No one cares about the blood, sweat, and tears that art or beauty require.”
Even for a dick, Trump is widely considered to be a braggart with an outsized and unwarranted opinion of himself and his talents. This is thought to be reason for the common theme linking the names of his many properties and businesses. They include:
• Trump Palace
• Trump Parc
• Trump Park Avenue
• Trump Tower
• Trump World Tower
• Trump Star Tower
• Trump Plaza
• Trump Grande
• Trump Place
• Trump Taj Mahal
• Trump Marina
• Trump Casino
• Trump Island Villas
• Trump Elite Tower
• Trump Tower Variations
• Trump Ice bottled water
• Trump Vodka
• Trump Shuttle
• Trump Golf
• Trump Magazine
• Trump Cologne for Men
• The Donald J. Trump Signature Men’s Collection
Trump considers himself the consummate dealmaker. “Deals are my art form,” he has written, “other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.” That, and having sexual intercourse with curiously "mannish" women.
Career
Trump portrays himself as a self-made man, but, in fact, he started his career at his father's successful real-estate company, the Trump Organization. While it is true that since then he has been successful in finding other wealthy dicks to buy apartments and condos in his many dick buildings, he is not as successful or as wealthy as he portrays himself to be.
In 2005, the journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, a staff writer for The New York Times, published the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.” In the book O’Brien claimed that Trump was not, as he claims, a billionaire, and worth only $250 million. Trump filed suit against O’Brien for “libel” in 2006. The suit is still pending.
Not in dispute is the fact that Trump’s businesses have been in and out of bankruptcy court since the early 1990’s. In 1991, The Taj Mahal Casino, which Trump financed largely with high-interest junk bonds, was forced into bankruptcy. In 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel was forced to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan after being unable to meet it dept payments. In 2004, Trump Hotels was also forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. About that bankruptcy he said, “I don't think it's a failure, it's a success." This confusion with opposites is considered by many to be a possible explanation for his taste in women.
In 2004, Trump became the Executive Producer of the NBC show “The Apprentice,” a reality show in which contestants vie to see who is the biggest dick, as judged by Trump. Participants are dismissed from the show with the signature phrase, “You’re fired,” which Trump has tried to trademark. In 2007, ratings were down significantly from 2006, and the show was last among the networks in its timeslot. Perhaps this is because all of the women on the show, instead of competing to win, are focusing their energies on having sex with Trump: “All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me -- consciously or unconsciously,” said Trump. “That's to be expected.”
Family
In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelnickova, whom he also branded with the “Trump” name. Ivana, a Czechoslovakian peroxide blond with a penchant for plastic surgery and international playboy wastrels, nicknamed Trump “The Donald.” They had three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka (sic) and Eric. Ivanka later claimed to be a “fashion model.”
Though Ivana was also a dick, and shared The Donald’s love of the dick aesthetic, it was not enough to keep the marriage together. In the early 1990’s, Trump began having sexual intercourse with a woman named Marla Maples. She was an “actress,” because she had appeared in a movie called “Maximum Overdrive,” in which she played a character named “2nd Woman.” Ivana filed for divorce shortly after, and Trump and Maples were married in 1993.
Though Trump was unsuccessful in branding Maples with the Trump name, he was able to inseminate her. In 1993, Maples gave birth to Trump’s fourth dick progeny, “Tiffany” (sic). Trump and Maples divorced in 1999.
Trump soon started dating Melanie Knauss, a Slovenian woman who looks like a Slovenian man. She/He became Trump new trophy wife in 2004. She is seven years older than Donald Trump, Jr. It is known that she allowed the aging Trump, who has unnaturally-colored orange hair styled in a bizarre comb-over, to penetrate her at least once, as she gave birth to Trump’s fifth dick offspring, Barron (sic) William Trump, in 2006.
About Barron, Trump had this to say in 2007: "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent -- all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur, and most importantly, hopefully he's smart because smart is really the ingredient,"
Feuds
In the 1980’s Spy Magazine, edited by Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson, dubbed Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian.” In 2006, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Spy, Trump was asked about the moniker. Trump’s reply, which he has had 25 years to think about, was, in the opinion of many, as classy as the gold marble in Trump Tower: “In fact, my fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” It is presumed he is talking about his penis.
In 2006 and 2007, Trump was engaged in a feud with Rosie O’Donnell, former co-host of the talk show "The View." On the show O’Donnell claimed that Trump orchestrated a controversy with the Miss Universe pageant, which he owns, in order to generate publicity for the season premier of “The Apprentice.” Trump's reply was no less trenchant than his retort to Carter and Anderson, calling O’Donnell “fat,” a “slob,” and an “animal,” “very unattractive,” and “a pigface.” He then claimed “I never went bankrupt” and threatened that either he or one of “his friends” would soon “steal” the openly-gay O’Donnell’s girlfriend away. Given Trump's relationships with Ivana Trump and Melanie Knauss, this was not considered to be an idle threat.
Trivia
In the 1980’s Trump retained the legal services of Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, closeted self-hating homosexual and a symbol of pure evil. Their meetings are generally considered to be some of the few times in which Trump has not been the worst person in the room.
Dickipedia.org Home
Dickipedia is a production of 236.com
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Extraterrestial Summit in Lajas, PR
(if you click on the photo above you should be able to see read the article, which is priceless)
I have always wondered about the obsession with extraterrestials that seems to prevail among sectors of my fellow Puerto Rican population. Whenever I visit, I am mesmerized by the wide variety of OVNI or UFO-related periodicals avaiable at the check-out line at the local PUEBLO supermarket or Farmacia Moscoso racks. From my childhood I recall being terrified by stories of the hybrid monster the garadiabolo and more recently we heard about the chupacabras. There are also the stories of UFO landings all over the Island that are somehow linked to it being in the Bermuda Triangle. And now I have belatedly learned that since 2005 a gentleman in Lajas has taken it to the next level, making plans for an OVNIPUERTO and today he is hosting a summit for those who have like him had contact with those from outer space.
I accidentally came across this hysterical bit of real news when I was on the El Nuevo Dia website reading local news from the Island, which of course then led me to You Tube. There, I found a terrifying but apparently not fake piece of footage from a show called "A Calson Quitao" where three men are discussing - with a total lack of irony I might add- the logistics for establishing said OVNIPUERTO on the Island:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n175BBi28eY
Miss Puerto Rico Places Within Top 15 in Miss World Pageant
Breaking News:
Miss Puerto Rico, Jennifer Guevera, placed in the top 15 finalists for Miss World. Here she is, proving my point that, for Puerto Ricans, metallics and animal prints are neutrals.
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