- The League of Fascist Despots lives, everyone! Men like Bashir al Assad, Bob Mugabe, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-Il and Hu Jintao have to stick together because they are a dying breed. These repressive ass hats can commiserate over their knack for trampling the basic human rights of their people, ruling with an iron fist and crushing dissent like a fly on the window. Their kinship warms the heart, especially on Thanksgiving Day, even if none of them are actually celebrating the holiday. But in a sense, Chavez and Jintao are celebrating, just not in a conventional way. Instead, China has agreed to a new $4 billion loan to help Venezuela boost its oil output and will also help upgrade power plants and increase production of iron and aluminum. Venezuelan officials announced the deal Wednesday as the latest move toward China becoming Venezuela's biggest foreign lender. The communist nation has previously agreed to more than $32 billion in loans and its investment in Venezuela has risen swiftly in recent years. Rather than repaying the loans through conventional means, Chavez's government is settling its debts with oil shipments. Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez revealed during a meeting with Chinese officials that the new $4 billion loan agreement would be signed soon with the purpose of increasing oil production involving Venezuelan and Chinese companies from about 100,000 barrels a day to about 330,000 barrels a day. Under the new deal, oil production involving Chinese companies should reach about 1.1 million barrels a day by 2014 as Venezuela seeks to increase its overall oil output from what it says is now roughly 3 million barrels a day to about 4 million barrels a day by 2015. Coincidentally, the infusion of cash from China comes just in time for Chavez to rig next year's presidential election in Venezuela, er, um, fuel his re-election campaign. Chinese companies are helping with upgrades to power plants, building public housing for the government and constructing railways. The two governments are also discussing plans to boost iron ore production, expand a pier, dredge the Orinoco River and "expand our capacity of rail transport for transporting iron ore," Ramirez said at the televised meeting. The extra oil being shipped from Venezuela to China is expected to come from a vast reservoir of heavy crude in Venezuela's eastern Orinoco River basin. It is one more infusion of fuel to keep the League of Fascist Despots going strong……………
- Nothing about Jennifer Lopez is all that authentic or talented. Even when she’s selling out for a car commercial that is as artificial and produced as anything an artist can do, she can’t pull it off without some cheating. The woman who once sang about being the same “Jenny from the block” she used to be growing up clearly doesn’t have an authentic, real bone in her body, even when filming a commercial for a car that is wildly popular in Europe but pretty rare in the United States. Serving as the omnipresent new face of Fiat, Lopez appears in a commercial in which she drives one of the automaker’s compact cars through a city while some of her crappy music plays and also does a bit of dancing as men throughout town are captivated by her mere presence and that of her shiny new ride. Anyone who has watched a single primetime show, sporting event or news broadcast over the past few weeks has seen the incessant ad more than once and watched Lopez drive the Fiat 500 through the Bronx on what is supposed to be a heart-warming inspirational drive down memory lane. "Here, this is my world," Lopez coos in voiceover as she's shown behind the steering wheel with scenes of her hometown passing by outside the car. "This place inspires me to be tougher, to stay sharper, to think faster. They may be just streets to you, but to me, they're a playground." Shockingly, the entire ad is a total sham. Lopez never actually went anywhere near the Bronx to film the commercial and instead depicted the borough that so inspires her by filming all of her dreamy, close-up shots from the safety and warmth of Los Angeles. A body double was used for the low-speed drive through the Bronx and the shots of Lopez behind the wheel were combined with the body double's driving work to make it appear as if it was the musically talentless pop hack who was driving the entire time. Fiat didn’t exactly do Lopez any favors by issuing a press release to go with the 60-second "My World" spot declared that the commercial showed Lopez "driving a Fiat 500 Cabrio as she travels through the streets of Manhattan to the Bronx where she grew up." Lopez has not commented on the controversy, but Fiat did issue a statement Wednesday acknowledging that some cinematic magic went into filming the spot without issuing any apology for its deception. "Both commercials featuring Jennifer Lopez were indeed filmed in the Bronx as well as outside locations," the statement explained. "As you may know, in today's world, people are increasingly mobile and their work takes them to a variety of locations. As a result, we took the opportunity to film wherever Ms. Lopez was working at the time to accommodate her schedule. The commercial tells the story of how the simple elements of our upbringing can help explain who we are, where we're going and serve as a source of inspiration to achieve our goals in life. One does not need to be in a specific location to be inspired or continue to be inspired." Wow. That is an impressive load of corporate bullsh*t………………
- Black Friday takes its toll on a person. Rolling out of bed at 3 a.m., battling insane traffic and parking four miles from there store of your choosing before battling hundreds of other pathetic losers in line for prime position to grab a super cheap laptop or digital camera is tough on one’s mental (and physical) well-being, so who is there to tend to the hurting souls after a tough day pounding the carpet and linoleum at the local mall? In Kennesaw, Ga., missionaries James and Monica Satcher are stepping up to fill that void. Knowing that shoppers headed home on Black Friday will be exhausted and possibly demoralized, the Satchers have a plan to lift people’s spirits by shepherding them into a prayer service without ever having to leave the comfort of their vehicle. "Life changes, the pace of life has gone through the roof, people are so fast-paced these days," said James Satcher. "We're trying to adapt with it, give people what they need." Adapting for the Satchers in this case means a drive-through prayer service, which they plan to advertise with large banners along Cobb Parkway on Friday. The signs will point people to the parking lot of the church where the couple is based, , just north of the corner of Highway 41 and Acworth Due West Road. "We want to keep the church, and keep Christ relevant, to people's lives," James Satcher explained. "We'll be praying with people as they come through. So they can even stay in their car and tell us what they need." There will be two prayer services for weary shoppers, one on Black Friday and the other on Saturday, with both running from
9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. What better way to cap a hectic morning of trampling senior citizens, trucking 10-year-olds in the Barbie aisle at Toys R Us and beating some desperate soccer mom with four kids in her van to the last available parking spot at the mall than to stop by God’s house for some prayer time in your car…………
- Disliking Dallas Mavericks guard DeShawn Stevenson is difficult. Anyone who inks the Linc, i.e. gets a beastly tattoo of the $5 bill with Abraham Lincoln’s likeness on it, on the front of their neck is a bonafide badass. But disliking the colorful tattoo lover became much easier for one member of the NBA Players Association hierarchy after Stevenson took a nuclear-level run at him on Wednesday. Stevenson, a role player who is certainly not on the same level as stars like Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant and LeBron James and is not paid like them, expressed his frustration with the job performance of players association executive director Billy Hunter during the lockout. "I felt like we should have decertified in July," Stevenson said prior to a charity exhibition game in California. "I feel like Billy Hunter is doing a horrible job because basically now [the owners] know our hand. The media knows our hand. The owners know our hand." Stevenson went on to say that he believes the NBA's labor impasse will wipe out the entire season. His take is that there is too much animosity between the players and owners for a deal to be reached and the season to be saved, largely because the owners have ignored the significant concessions the players have made during negotiations. "For me, personally, I don't think there will be a season," Stevenson said. "Right now there is just a lot of bad blood and [the owners] keep putting offers out that we're rejecting. So we're not going anywhere." The two sides did resume talks late Wednesday with the aim of resolving the anti-trust lawsuits after negotiations broke off on Nov. 14 when the players walked away from the owners' final proposal and dissolved the union. The next day, two groups of players filed class-action antitrust lawsuits against the league in California and Minnesota, respectively, taking the fight from the negotiating table to the court room. The two lawsuits have since been consolidated in Minnesota, but the lockout has still dragged into its 147th day as of Thursday. Stevenson’s comments were quickly relayed to Hunter, who did his best to diffuse a combustible situation. "DeShawn is entitled to his opinion," Hunter replied. "It would be much more meaningful if he were more directly involved and would have understood what fully transpired and understood the issues. I think he'd be better informed. "I respect DeShawn's right to say and feel what he is saying. I can't fault that. I don't have nothing negative about DeShawn. He said it. It's not justified, but he has every right in the world to say what he thinks." Okay…..so he didn’t really attempt to diffuse the situation and instead lit Stevenson up for being lazy, ill-informed and speaking out of turn, but other than that, everything is cool. Perhaps Stevenson is still bitter because he and his Mavericks teammates have yet to receive their championship rings for winning the title last season after knocking off the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. They were to receive their championship rings and raise their championship banner on Nov. 1, the scheduled season opener against the Chicago Bulls, but that obviously hasn’t happened and won’t any time soon………….
- Online censorship is a hot-button issue everywhere in the world where Internet access exists, but not everyone views the issue the same way. That point was made crystal clear Wednesday when the European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, ruled that content owners cannot ask ISPs to filter out illegal content. The ruling could have far-reaching implications for the creative industries as they attempt to crack down on piracy because the court ruled that while content providers can ask ISPs to block specific sites, wider filtering was in breach of the E-Commerce Directive. That contradicted a previous ruling by a Belgian court that a local rights holder could force an ISP to filter content. The original case that led to the higher court’s ruling stemmed from 2004, when SABAM, a Belgian company responsible for authorizing music rights, discovered that customers of local ISP Scarlet were downloading music illegally via peer-to-peer networks similar to Napster (when it was still Napster) and LimeWire (before it was gutted and rendered impotent). When the case went before the Brussels Court of First Instance, justices ordered Scarlet to make it impossible for its customers to send or receive files containing music from SABAM's catalogue on such networks. Scarlet appealed to the Brussels Court of Appeal on the grounds that the injunction failed to comply with EU law. Its attorneys argued that the obligation to monitor communications on its network was in breach of the E-Commerce Directive. Seven long years later, the European Court of Justice agreed. The court’s justices determined that the lower court’s decision could affect Scarlet's ability to do business because it would have to "install a complicated, costly, permanent computer system at its own expense.” Also, the court ruled that the filtering could infringe the rights of customers and their right to protect their own data. The original ruling could also lead to legal content being blocked, another infringement of individuals’ rights. "Such an injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications," the court said in a statement. Other telecommunications companies are currently engaged in legal action against the UK's Digital Economy Act, claiming it is also in breach of the E-Commerce Directive. Online freedom organizations hailed the high court’s decision as a blow struck for the rights of the common man, something we can all be thankful for on this day, no matter where we reside……………
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