Thursday, June 30, 2011

So What Happened?

As I said in my last post, my conclusion that the harpercon government has no legitimate authority arose out of my support for Brigette DePape's violation of Parliamentary decorum during the Speech From the Throne. As I said, I actually have a great deal of reverence for our democratic institutions. I lament how they're compromised and abused and hope for their improvement, whereas stephen harper sees them as barriers to be overcome and burdens to be treated with contempt.

I decided, that since harper treated Parliament with contempt, he had no right to complain when his opponents decided to violate the rules.

And that's what led me to my bigger conclusion. Because, in all honesty, before and during the election I thought that the most likely outcome was another harpercon minority government which would then be swept aside by a coalition, or (smaller possibility), that he would be outright defeated. I gave hardly any thought to the possibility that Canada's political culture was so undemocratic that he would be rewarded with a majority.

But we are so undemocratic and debased (as a people) that he now has the powers of a majority government. That's the new reality. But what to do about it? What if we don't do something about it? Well, look at the downward spiral of US-American politics. There, the people countenanced two stolen elections. Two illegal wars (and now a third one). The torture of their own citizens. Vast government spying networks. The services of the US Coast Guard put at the service of British Petroleum during its oil spill. A President who "looks forward, not backwards" with regards to his predecessor's crimes so that he can maintain and build upon the despotic powers those crimes achieved. A country with a 20 percent unemployment rate and a political elite that focuses on tax cuts for billionaires and deficit reduction on the backs of the poorest. And etc., etc.

There's absolutely no hope for the US-American political system. Especially through elections dominated by the two parties of Wall Street.

And we're almost there, my fellow Canadians. harper's crimes during the past six years have been unprecedented assaults on the basics of Parliamentary democracy. And we, as a people, have let him get away with, ... no, why don't I just say it: REWARD him for his crimes with a majority government (thanks to the votes of enough ignorant, apathetic or anti-democratic people).

The first step in reversing this process is acknowledging the depths to which we have sunk. And doing so on more than a passing intellectual level, as in: "Yeah. I guess you're right. harper has no basis to his claim for my acceptance of his authority." We have to realize that in the real world, we have a despot for a prime minister, elected with the votes of people who either had no clue what they were doing, or who enthusiastically cheered on his violations of parliamentary democracy when he was stifled by Parliament's powers under a minority government. If we don't do something about this (also in the real world) we are saying that our devotion to Canadian democracy is hardly any greater than that of the harpercons.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

"Tee-Hee"

I've take some criticism for describing the harpercon majority government as "illegitimate." This criticism tends to come from empty-headed morons whose opinions I have as much regard for as I would a huge, steaming piece of dog-shit on my front steps.

There seems to be some inexplicable confusion regarding the justification for my categorization of stephen harper's government.

I arrived at my conclusions about harper from my positive reaction to Brigette DePape's protest in the Senate Chamber during the Speech From the Throne. You see, while I endorse the use of extra-Parliamentary tactics and occasional law-breaking, I'm actually very much a Parliament-respectin' kinda guy. As flawed and compromised as our democracy is, it's all we have, and we should work to improve it rather than tear it down.

So, why then, do I have an unvarnished sympathy for Ms. DePape's action? She renounced her oath of non-partisan professionalism, took advantage of her privileged place at the centre of our political system, and expressed her partisan views before a national audience. What sort of democracy would we have if our Parliament was to be opened to everyone who wanted to storm out onto the floor and protest or pontificate?

What sort of democracy would that be?

Well, what sort of democracy do we have now? Let's leave aside the capitalist class's domination of our democracy for a second. Let's focus on the kind of democracy stephen harper would give us:

Government power requires maintaining the confidence of the House of Commons. However, if the majority of the people's representatives have lost confidence in your government, what you do is you turn to the anachronism of the Crown and ask it to shut-down Parliament before the people's representatives can vote you out. You can do this whenever necessary.

We are governed by the Rule of Law and inspired by our respect for human rights. However, if you find yourself in a war, and you're too cheap to provide proper prisons for your detainees, and you hand them over to the US-Americans until they're found to have tortured and killed too many of their prisoners, forcing you to turn them over to another band of torturers, you must do the following:

- Accept no responsibility for as many prisoners as is possible. If you take some prisoners, make sure there is a representative of the torturing home government standing nearby and IMMEDIATELY hand them over to that person. No paperwork = No legal responsibilities!!! (Hopefully.)

- When you're not able to do that, hand the prisoners over to the torturing home government and then delay, delay, delay, telling the International Committee of the Red Cross about them, so that they're unable to keep tabs on their treatment. No evidence = No legal responsibilities!!! (Hopefully.)

- If you have pesky oversight bodies like the Military Police Complaints Commission, frustrate them at every turn and refuse to renew the mandates of chairpersons determined to do their job.

- If the fucking legislature of the pain-in-the-ass representatives of the people try to investigate this issue, call up the Crown and tell Him or Her to shut-down Parliament again, and then give the country some bullshit excuse for killing a year's worth of legislation.

The US-Americans fought their revolution to a great degree based on the idea that there should be no taxation without political representation under the British Constitution. Members of the British Parliament at the time said that they were correct in that assertion. But here in Canada, we have a prime minister who believes that we can have representation, but it should be powerless when it comes to controlling what the government does with the taxation! Parliament should be a rubber-stamp for the government's spending initiatives. If you find yourself with a pesky Speaker of House, who believes that it is Parliament that is the source of power in our democracy, and not the Prime Minister and Cabinet, shrug your shoulders and hope for a more compliant Speaker in the future. Then you can have your "Supreme Soviet" or your "Reichstag." Rely on your shit-head supporters and a large bulk of the rest of the population to regard these essential fundamentals of democratic accountability to be arcane and "boring" details that only political geeks need to care about.

True democracy requires honest and transparent government. (Especially since promising that sort of Accountability was a huge part of your initial rise to power!) However, if the mood strikes you, you should tamper with official government documents to make them say whatever you want them to say, in order to justify whatever it is you want to do. If a Cabinet Minister deliberately lies to Parliament about this, well, that's okay too. This time it was Bev Oda pretending that her staff recommended that KAIROS not be funded. Tomorrow it could be Vic Toews saying that violent crime is shooting through the roof and that the experts recommend the death penalty as the only effective deterrent. Whatever is necessary, once the principle of forgery and lying has been established.

So, that's stephen harper's idea of democracy in Canada. And, thanks to the apathy of almost 40% of the electorate who didn't vote at all, and 26% of the electorate who either thought that such assaults on democracy were either cool, or boring, or who had no idea that any of that stuff happened at all, but like their parents always voted Conservative and whatever, ... stephen harper has won a majority government. (Obviously, with the power of a majority government, harper won't have to resort to such blatant abuses to get his way. On the other hand, with the power of a majority government, we'll simply never know about his lies and abuses. It will all be a fait accompli.)

But, again, here's the rub: If the guy who presumes to write the rules for the rest of us doesn't respect the rules himself, why should we meekly acquiesce to his nonsense? If he was elected by people who don't give a shit about our rights in a minority parliament, why should we give a shit about their rights in a majority parliament? If he was elected by people who had no idea what they were doing, and the results of their choice are going to be a disaster for us (to say nothing of conveying a patina of legitimacy to these assaults on the basics of our democratic system), why should we be bound to respect their ignorant choice?

This is not about sour grapes people. I despised the Chretien and Martin Liberals, and, even when they'd help destroy democracy in Haiti, I did not call their power illegitimate. I despised stephen harper's minority government but I even said on this blog that we have to respect the legitimacy of his minority. It is stephen harper who has made himself unfit to govern us. It was stephen harper who trammelled all over the core of our democratic system. And a vote for such a despot is either a vote for despotism which can then make no claim on our respect, or it is a vote out of ignorance, which, given the stakes, likewise has no claim on our respect.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Hillary's Hypocrisy

Here's another example of why Glenn Greenwald rocks. In his post "Plurality of Americans love Gadaffi" Greenwald quotes the abominable Hillary Clinton's yammerings about the need for support for the US-led mission of regime change in Libya:
But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.
... with the results of a poll about US-Americans' views on the mission:
Americans are more likely to say they disapprove than approve of the U.S. military action in Libya. That represents a shift from three months ago, just after the mission began, when approval exceeded disapproval.
But the real zinger was Greenwald's juxtaposition of Hillary's self-righteous indignation that anybody would want to count themselves a "friend" of Gadaffi (at least in her own fervid imagination) and hers and her husband's self-professed friendships with the dictator Mubarak of Egypt and the support they've received from the dictatorship of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia:
"I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family" -- Hillary Clinton, March, 2009.

Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia . . . The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush
You know, blatant, self-serving, hypocritical bullshit doesn't come any clearer than what Hillary Clinton just spewed there. As Greenwald puts it:
There are some people in the world with the moral authority to accuse others of being too close to and supportive of brutal tyrants. Hillary Clinton is most definitely not on that list; in fact, she is very near the top of those who have no authority whatsoever to spout that accusation. Those questioning the war aren't declaring Gaddafi to be " friends of their family" or taking millions of dollars from his regime; they're simply questioning the legality, wisdom and morality of the war.
HAH! Since I first read that last night, Greenwald has added still more evidence of Hillary's hypocrisy:

UPDATE: During the Bush years, here's what the very same Hillary Clinton said with great (apparent) anger (via Doug Mataconis and BTD) -- audio here:

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, 'WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!'

But that was so then, and this is now.

The hits just keep on coming!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Saturday Posting Duties

Here's a tune:



I've been busy over here.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Afghan Document Dump

Big fucking deal. The Liberals and the harpercons (who both have blood on their hands) sat with some BQ dude who was sworn to secrecy, and filtered all the documents from Afghanistan to remove any incriminating evidence before passing what got through the filter to a bunch of judges who then release that particle to us after checking such mundane things as the arrest of handfuls of Afghan peasants for "national security."

The fact that there's not much documentary evidence stems mainly from the fact that the harpercons made it military policy to hand over every prisoner to the first breathing Afghan government official right away so as to be able to avoid having to take responsibility for them.

Furthermore, the prisoners who we "lost track of" after "delays in notifying the Red Cross"? Well, ... that's just it, isn't it? Once you lose track of somebody in a torture chamber, ... and fail to notify the relevant authority that would give a shit about that person (because they're not amoral scum-bags like our illegitimate prime minister), that's a crime right there.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Song For Taleb

Too vurshens to!





"Sniff!"

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Posting Duties

Enjoy ...




.. I sure as shit do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Belated Thoughts on the Vancouver Hockey Riot

I remember way back in 1986 or 1987, when the Hamilton Tiger-Cats won the coveted Grey Cup (and the whole world cheered). I was living in London, Ontario at the time and I could only chuckle at watching the news that in response to the win a bunch of goofs went downtown and trashed the place. My friends and I laughed when we saw a brief glimpse of a bad-ass from our former high-school in the midst of the chaos. A concrete block was thrown through the window of a bus (nobody was injured).

The television reporters (and a few others) were full of grave seriousness as they reported on the carnage and condemned the rioters, but I just thought it was a stupid joke for the most part.

Evidently, in Montreal, there's a tradition of smashing windows and burning police cars (and, apparently, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of racist pigs). These things are like "Acts of God" almost. It's just a craze that sweeps through a crowd of individuals the way grasshoppers get turned into locusts, and while I don't want to completely trivialize it, I think that as long as nobody gets seriously hurt, well, what can you do but collect your insurance and sweep up the broken glass.

I suppose I'm trivializing it, if not completely, at least way too much. "If it was your home that was under attack, your windows being broken, you wouldn't be singing such a happy tune thwap!" No doubt true. But it's also the case that a few broken windows don't signify the downfall of Canadian civilization either. It's especially the case that window smashing at a political event is NOT the first stage in an attempt to impose a regime change and install members of the Black Bloc in power.

The threat of some smashed windows is certainly no justification for spending $1,000,000,000.00 and upwards on "security." (Speaking of which, how much was spent on security in Vancouver in case of a victory or defeat riot? Was it anywhere approaching $1,000,000,000.00?) If not, why not? There appears to have been much greater destruction.

So, what do I think about the Vancouver riot? A little bit shocking. Pretty excessive. Grist for comedians. The work of anarchists and other left-wing kooks? Oh, I highly doubt that. I think that anyone who says that is seriously jumping the gun. Sports fans rioted. A few people were drunk and pissed, and then the mob mentality took over. I wasn't pleased that Bruins fans were assaulted (especially if they were visiting US-Americans), or that people who tried to interrupt the violence were themselves brutally assaulted.

But this was sports hooliganism over all, not yet another sign of the danger of the leftist enemy within. And, sadly, this sort of behaviour is becoming more and more common. And if you want to know who's fault it really is, it's Don Cherry's fault. It's the whole importation of the cultural phenomenon of obnoxious, macho, US-American braggadocio. This is the attitude of the self-satisfied louts and boors who believe that because of their incidental strength and power, they are exempted from the normal standards of civilized behaviour and decency. This is the sort of mentality that the pathetic, flabby, insecure, cowardly bully, stephen harper wants Canada to adopt. We're going to be a "strong" and "tough" military power, that, together with its best buddy, the world's only super-power, the United States, stands up for what it wants without regard for the rules or the opinions of pipsqueak countries.

Except that Canada is not a great power. And Canada needs international cooperation and civility more than does the United States. And those goons who attacked US-Americans in Vancouver have to realize that they're not the shit compared with the United States, and we, as a country, should apologize to any of them that were hurt. However, in a country ruled by a party that, together with its supporters, sees nothing wrong in the RCMP murdering a Polish immigrant just arrived in the country, and lying about it afterwards, this sort of revolting, bullying, loutish is simply to be expected.

Friday, June 17, 2011

NDP Declares War on Qaddafi?

Libya's Qaddafi, however much he was unfairly demonized by the ever-hypocritical, sanctimonious United States of America, appears to be a genuinely unpopular Arab dictator. I say "Arab" dictator because he looked ready to be another much needed victim of the Arab Spring.

Still, when the mainstream, capitalist media decided to make his victims more important than the victims in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and etc., my bullshit detector went off. It just had to be Qaddafi who the imperialists would stand up to, didn't it?

So, there was a UN resolution to approve the imposition of a no-fly zone to protect the civilians from being slaughtered and the scum-bags in NATO were going to impose it, and CNN and FUX News and our own craven CBC were going to glorify in it, and I could barely stomach the hypocrisy. At the exact same time, in the exact same world-historical wave of revolt, the US Fifth Fleet sat yards away as US ally Saudi Arabia's forces helped the corrupt, sectarian bigots of the US-allied Bahrain royal family slaughter their Shiite subjects who were protesting against institutional injustice, corruption, and dictatorship.

If there is a UN-imposed no-fly zone, let it be imposed by a UN authority. If it's a no-fly zone mandate, then keep it a no-fly zone mission. Protect those people. But don't give NATO another opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Don't give those psychopathic motherfuckers another chance to legitimize their imperialist interference in other countries. Especially when it's so Linkobviously, blatantly hypocritical. Qaddafi is being punished for his independence, not for his crimes.

Which brings us to the NDP. It ain't rocket-science people! It's a no-fly zone to protect civilians, not a regime-change mandate. By voting for regime-change, you have committed Canada to another idiotic war, to impose (no doubt) a government of scum-bags, a-la Afghanistan and Haiti. (Given that you even have the luxury of your disagreement not counting for shit anyway, I don't see what you hope to accomplish with this bit of brain-dead war mongering. Unless losing your Quebec support is your main goal.)

Congratulations shit-heads.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil ..

... is that good men do nothing.

That's a neat quote. But anybody can say that. For instance, some people imagined that the non-existent threat of Saddam Hussein's imaginary "weapons of mass destruction" put the whole world at risk. Furthermore, given Saddam's non-existent alliance with Al Qaeda, his imaginary weapons could have been used to blackmail the whole world into forced conversion to fundamentalist Islam ruled from the restored Caliphate in Baghdad.

Yes, indeedy! It was a grave threat, ... if only totally illusory and ridiculous.

But for the shit-head believers in the threat, we who (rightly, as it turned out) opposed the invasion of Iraq were the fools in the "good countries" trying to prevent the "good men" from being able to do something to meet the threat and prevent the triumph of evil.

Seen in this context, eloquence, united with stupidity, becomes ridiculous pomposity.

I don't mind eloquent, stirring, language. But always make sure that your subject matter and the facts are equal to the words.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

stephen harper's "Muscular" Foreign Policy

Speech from stephen harper on the foreign policy of his new majority government:

My fellow Conservatives (for you are the only people that matter to me when I make my policies), welcome to the new reality of 21st Century Canada: A Conservative majority! Now that I have my majority government, you can be sure that we intend to move forward on many fronts; restricting abortion rights, attacking proponents of the gay lifestyle, putting the First Nations in their place. And have no fear, there will be plenty of G20 tramplings of the human rights of those pesky protesters!

My only regret with having a majority government is that, with a party of such easily malleable human garbage which cravenly obeys my every whim, I won't have any further opportunities to display my unbridled contempt for Parliament and the rest of Canada's ...ugh! ... democratic institutions and traditions.

But for now, I want to speak to you about the new, more muscular foreign policy of my majority government. Because now that I have a majority, there is absolutely nothing that can stand in the way of directing Canada's resources into a foreign policy that reflects my values (and yours if you happen to agree with me).

Because I feel a familiar tingle in my lil' meat-stick at the thought of healthy young men straining and exerting themselves as they fight for their lives, my values are martial values. War. Killing other people. Well, to be honest, ... ordering other people to kill people. Nothing makes my own lil' soldier shrivel up as the idea of placing my great self at risk of death or dismemberment.

So, to begin: We shall stay in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that we've been winning over there for ten years now, the insurgency is larger than ever. Somebody hasn't given them the message apparently! And all because the government of which Karzai is a figurehead robs them blind and rapes little boys. Well fear not! Under orders from my American masters, Canadian soldiers will stay in a combat capacity (with a majority I can safely dispense with this "training" bullshit) and fight, kill, and die to ensure that the Afghan government can continue to rape little boys.

We shall put our troops at the service of our American masters in Haiti, in order to ensure that Haitian politicians can be pressured into keeping their people working for starvation wages. Canadian soldiers, you all will be proud to know, will fight to defend any Haitian puppet government that resorts to torturing, killing, and dismembering its people in order that they be kept in misery and starvation. People ask me; "Mr. Harper, why are we so involved in beating down the Haitians?" The answer is very simple and I agree with my predecessor, Paul Martin, on this one. It's because they're black and they speak French.

Canada will continue to bomb Libya, including civilian areas, because we're ... tee-hee! Excuse me. Because we're ... we're ... SNORT! Chuckle! ... Snicker. Because we're concerned about innocent pe ... Oh god I can't stand it! It's too funny! Um. Ahem!! Innocent people don't want 'em killed, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

It came to my attention that a lot of Canadian Jewish voters love Israel so much they'll support her no matter what atrocities she commits. In light of this fact, and because I'm pretty much brain-dead, I too promise to support Israel no matter what. Plus, I grew up hating Arabs and other assorted Muslims, so this all meshes well with my childish TV movie of the week morality.

Previous governments shortchanged the Canadian Forces. So do I. But I only do that to the dumb-fuck soldiers who find themselves wounded and maimed in the course of the duty of fulfilling my cynical, imperialist agenda. I won't shortchange the military the hardware, ... and it makes me hard to think of it! ... the HARDware that it needs to do the job of slaughtering icky poor people the world over. I think Canadian soldiers who don't die gloriously in service to my agenda deserve a life of poverty, getting nickeled and dimed by their Department of National Defense. It's so depressing thinking about them like that, instead of enclosed in a nice shiny coffin with a Canadian flag draped tastefully over it.

Oh well, anyway, ... that's the cool parts of my foreign policy. It's not like you have a choice now.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

An Important Cause and an Illegitimate Government

I've said before that the environment isn't my main focus. I hate camping. I hate flies and mosquitoes. I like cities, books, bars, ... that sort of thing. Then there's the science. It's all I've got to grasp political-economy, ... were someone to come up with some scholarly paper about soil depletion, global warming, ocean stocks, or whatever, I wouldn't really know how to respond.

At the same time, I realize that without the planet's life-sustaining properties, the human race, with its cities, books, bars, art, etc., would soon dwindle into oblivion.

So, given the fact that 99.9% of the scientists who have the right to an opinion say that global warming is real and that it's caused by human activity, and that if the human activity that causes global warming isn't left unchecked, civilization itself is threatened, I take it seriously.

And given the fact that the deniers of human-caused global warming are generally oil-industry shills and complete shit-heads, I take the crisis more seriously and treat the doubters with the massive contempt that they deserve.

And, therefore, given the news about temperature change and carbon emissions just released, and the increased calls for civil disobedience to try to save humanity (regardless of whether a festering pustule like Ezra Levant thinks it's all a crock) is more than called for.

And, in this context of necessary civil disobedience, we, as Canadians, have an obligation given the fact that our country (besides being complicit in torture in Afghanistan, besides being a terrorist state that tortures its own citizens, besides being a racist, colonialist country that forces its unconquered First Nations to live in squalor and criminalizes them when they enter our cities, besides being a cruel, oppressive, squalid country that destroyed democracy in Haiti and forced the Haitians to live in grinding misery and starvation) is one of the worst offenders in creating this disaster.

Thankfully, the task of civil disobedience in this country is even more justified because the government that is going whole-hog to help destroy civilization is completely illegitimate. Our prime minister is a despot and he won his position as a result of an archaic electoral system, but, more importantly, he was elected by people who were either ignorant of the reality that they were voting for the party of despotism or they simply didn't give a shit.

It's those voters who didn't give a shit that I'm interested in. These people viewed harper's serial assaults on Canadian democracy and Canadian democratic institutions, because, in their warped minds, all of this helped their party maintain power while leaving the opposition to plead impotently by the sidelines yet again. It's the mentality of the bully. When adults get together to work on some project, or, what the hell, play a board game together at a table at the cottage, if one party cheats their way to victory, the other participants will probably complain, but it's not likely that they'll take the offender and smash his head through the window. In a more serious context (like, say, a business arrangement), cheaters are taken to court. If the courts rule in the plaintiff's favour and the cheater ignores it, with impunity, sometimes the plaintiff will complain about the courts and the injustice of it all. But here, we're talking about the people who make the laws, and appoint the judges, and who write the rules.

The whole system is debased because of our toleration of this monster. The longer we endure his revolting, disgusting presence, the more will our political culture slide into total irrelevance and sick comedy, as in the United States of America.

We must unite, and we must plan, and we must organize, environmentalists, unions, intellectuals, teachers, students, voters, citizens, philanthropists, parents, children, workers, the unemployed, judges, lawyers, we must hit them hard, we must hit them everywhere, we must force this government to resign.

And the swine who voted for this piece of shit government, the bullies who were so happily contemptuous of democracy when it is their party which benefits by ripping up the rule book and all standards of decency? They have no right to be listened to. They have renounced their claims to fairness, to due process, to everything.

And, if they, a minority of the population, really want to get physical to try to protect their despotic government, they are more than welcome to try. Because that is what it has come to. That's the significance of harper's tearing-up the rule book. That book of rules existed so that power could be exchanged peacefully and that said power would act within certain constitutional-democratic limits.

It has come to this: We have an illegitimate government which the very existence of continues to debase our claims to be a constitutional democracy. The harpercons have beaten Canadian democracy to the ground (or did we all help them?) and now they're pissing on its unconscious form.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Some Reminders ...

The votes of ignorant people tend not to demand respect. How can they? "Huh? When you said 'exterminate the poor' we thought you were talking about bed-bugs n' stuff!"

Which is not to say that people need to pass a test or something before they vote. It's just that, if, combined with the votes of other people, ignorant people elect horrible, disgusting, despotic governments, then sane, law-abiding people aren't bound by the results of the actions of those ignorant people.

The "other people" I referred to earlier are, nowadays, the scum-bags who voted "Conservative" knowing full well that the Conservative Party of Canada despises democracy. These voters are obviously people who despise democracy themselves. Could you imagine the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth if the Liberals had done what harper has done? (And, no harpercon stooges, "Adscam" while repulsive, was nothing like what harper has done. And, at the end of the day, the harpercon reaction to Liberal crimes and misdemeanours has been to shriek about "Liberal corruption," promise reforms, win power, and act even worse and then stammer like morons - "B-b-but the LIB-rullllsss!!!")

At the end of the day, you have voted for a guy who attacked the very premise of responsible government. A guy who prorogued Parliament to obstruct an investigation into torture. A guy who thinks it's okay to doctor official public documents in order to provide (fake) approval for his policies and then lie to Parliament about it. A guy who thinks Parliament should be nothing more but a rubber stamp for whatever he asks for, to the extent of denying it simple, basic cost-estimates.

That's the sort of "democracy" you vote for? To hell with you!

To hell with you!

To hell with your vote!

To hell with the outcome of decisions based on contempt or ignorance!

To hell with your party!

To hell with stephen harper!

To hell with this government!

Seriously. I don't recognize this government. Nobody should.

...

Something else on my mind, ... I'm still thinking about the Arab uprising and how some shit-heads supported the Mubarak (and other) dictatorships. They argued that things would be worse there, what with the Arabs all being barbaric religious fanatics or whatever.

But here's the thing: There's a difference between hoping for something better for people, hoping they gain the freedom to try, and then getting disappointed if things go bad, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, paying for their torture and oppression and approving of it.

The only remotely justifiable reason for oppressing another people would be if their freedom (or their descent into chaos and fanaticism) directly threatened you. But the Arab world cannot threaten the West, except through the oil weapon. And given that we need to reduce carbon emissions, not raise them, that would be all to the good anyway.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Arts Funding in Canada

There's a huge discussion at Dr. Dawg's which I haven't read very much of. It's in regards to the wingnut-welfare Sun Media's attack on government cultural grants. In an update, Dawg provides a link to this article, critiquing the Sun Media attack (which was apparently delivered in a show called "The Waste Report" or something).

I've read part of the article Dawg linked to, but as I did, I was overwhelmed with the significance of the following observation: These Sun Media and other "conservative" types are, once again, yammering about "waste" as if they don't notice the shit spilling out of their mouths, nostrils, ears, and leaking out from behind their eyeballs!

$35 billion for buggy fighter-planes and that doesn't even include spare parts of maintenance?

Untold billions for a massive prison expansion we don't need? (Hey Sun Media and dumb-ass hypocrite Krista Erickson; can we see a story of your outrage about harper refusing to provide Parliament with the cost estimates to his proposed policies? [Kinda important.])

$150 billion minimum deficits just to make up for the implosion of the crooked Ponzi-scheme of the gods of Wall Street?

$1 billion+ so that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair could FAIL to stop some windows being smashed and then slander the victims of his goon squad?

Tax-exemptions for idiotic religions?

Expense-account tax write-offs for elite Bay Street and Calgary oil executives to take each other out for dinner?

And on and on and on.

I don't give a flying fuck about your criticisms of arts funding. Nobody should. You're inveterate liars, hypocrites, and you're total morons. Un-fuck you.

You don't care about democracy or decency. I don't care at all what you think about anything.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

harpercon Complaints About Bridgette DePape

You see harpercons, here is what you can't grasp. There are CONSEQUENCES for your actions.

To whit: If you believe that Parliament is a joke, to be treated with contempt, you cannot then turn around and bitch and moan if some brave, principled individual like Bridgette DePape interrupts your contemptible ceremonies.

Do you see how that works?

YOU are the ones who believe that the people's representatives don't deserve to know how much of the people's money you plan on spending. YOU are the ones who believe that you can use the people's resources in Afghanistan anyway you choose, even if it means committing war crimes with our tax dollars. YOU are the ones who write handbooks for the chairs of Parliamentary committees to obstruct their work.

You simply have no claim to our respect or obedience.

Do you understand this now?

You have shat upon Canadian democracy and you are going to reap the whirlwind.

And, no, the sad fact that a united minority of ignorant or apathetic dullards managed to scrawl an X beside their harpercon candidate's name does NOT eradicate the fact that the members of this government hold democracy and Parliament in contempt.

The achievement of this horde of shit-heads is NOT something that we are bound to respect.

It doesn't work that way.

stephen harper has renounced his authority over us. That our political culture is so debased is no reason for us to pretend that he had any.

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Beginning of the Resistance

Bridgette Marcelle (aka Brigette DePape), a Senate page, was evicted from the Senate Chamber for holding up a sign saying "Stop Harper" during the Throne Speech of the witless, stupid, evil turds government.

Hurrah for Bridgette! Let's make this the first sign of the successful resistance to the harpercons' stupid, evil agenda.

Already though, the forces of ignorance and hypocrisy and vileness are farting out their condemnations: "Ms. DePape is showing disrespect for the institution of Parliament!"

Impolitical has the most reasoned, mature response to that bit of nonsense that I think you'll find anywhere:
What happens when august institutions are disrespected?

It breeds disrespect. That reference in the blog post title is to Mr. Harper's government and the actions it has taken which have bred that disrespect for one of the most esteemed institutions in Canada. The seat of our government has seen tremendous disrespect under his leadership. Not caring that one of your ministers inserts a "not" after a document had been signed by others, for example. Not respecting members of parliament who ask the government for the most basic of financial information supporting billions in purchases the government seeks to make. Making light of an historic contempt verdict. To cite the more egregious examples of recent memory and not even needing to go near the famous incidents of prorogation.

Breed disrespect, reap protest.
And here's my take on it: Fuck you, you sanctimonious goddamned hypocrites! You want to stand there and whine after harper demanded Parliament agree to approve policies after he REFUSED to tell Parliament how much they would cost? You want to stand there and whine about the dignity of Parliament after harper prorogued it because it was demanding to know about whether we were sending teenaged Afghan peasants to torture and rape? You want to stand there and bloviate about how harper "played by the rules" and won a majority (based on 26% of the electorate) after he ran to the Governor-General and asked for a prorogation to avoid a vote of non-confidence?

stephen harper repeatedly shat upon the FUNDAMENTALS of Canadian parliamentary democracy. There is nothing left to respect.

And just because almost 40% of the voters were ignorant, stupid, or selfish enough to vote for a guy who thinks the taxpayers should agree to fund multi-billion dollar programs without any information about them; a guy who thinks that he should be able to do anything he wants in a war zone without democratic oversight; a guy who is in the pay of the oil industry and therefore denies the reality of global warming and speeds the coming of a monstrous crisis of Biblical proportions, is NO REASON for the more enlightened, sane, democratic portion of the population to acquiesce.

harper voters are contemptible idiots. To hell with them and their tender feelings. Un-fuck you all!

You have been duped by a con-job and we are under no obligation to "respect" your ignorance and hypocrisy.

Bridgette's DePape's act will be the first of many to defy the idiotic, insane, stupid policies of the harpercons. They are bought-and-paid-for shills of the same corporate scum that are demanding that programs for the poor and the elderly in the USA be slashed to accommodate more tax-cuts for the super-rich and to pay for the bail-outs of Wall Street profiteers.

We will NOT acquiesce to this abuse simply out of respect for the decisions of the ignorant, the stupid, the hypocritical and the hateful.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

The Loyal Extra-Parliamentary Opposition

Yes, Liberal bloggers; we get it. In a majority government, the opposition is basically just a powerless debating society. (A state of affairs that a sizable unthinking, undemocratic minority evidently prefers!) So, yes, in this harpercon majority nightmare that we all find ourselves in, the NDP is powerless to stop anything. (Rather like the days of Brian Mulroney's majorities, when the Liberal "rat-pack" did their best to garner public attention to their criticisms of the government's policies. Say! If the "rat-pack" were brave and wily, ... maybe the NDP can provide some important debate as well! Or does that only work for Liberals?)

I'm not sure what the point of your constant reminding us of this is though. Yours is the party that played the role of the third-party spoiler this time around. If anyone is responsible for this state of affairs, it's you guys. And, furthermore, now that you're the third party, I'm curious to know why you don't just curl up and die and wander off in different directions to join one of the two mainstream parties.

Could it be because you believe in your centrist Liberal political philosophy and you feel dissastisfied with the remaining two alternatives? You say that you believe your own political views deserve their own vehicle and that you have vital ideas that need a hearing? Well knock me over with a feather!!! That's how I used to feel as an NDP supporter!! Maybe you're starting to understand about political convictions now, and how it's a stupid fucking argument to tell someone to abandon a party just because it's not capable of forming the government and actually divides the opposition to the government! Maybe criticisms should be addressed at the actual policies and their justifications, rather than to some empty-headed question of tactics.

Regardless, the main point - that the opposition to a majority government is basically powerless - remains true. So the question is, how else can we thwart the harpercon agenda (An agenda supported by a selfish or ignorant MINORITY of the electorate)?

We must continue to utilize all avenues of resistance.

harper is still vulnerable to legal investigations into possible criminality (such as complicity in torture).

Massive, well organized rallies can show the extent of public opposition to his stupidity.

Principled civil disobedience can gum-up the works.

Organized boycotts of harper-endorsing mainstream media (unless they LISTEN TO THEIR CUSTOMERS a-la the magic of the free-market!) until they agree to become truthful and critical of this despot.

But Canada has a long way to go. Our political culture has decayed under ten years of dog-whistle, right-wing propaganda.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The Liberals and the Centre

I think it was in the Martin or the Dion years, when, on Canadian Cynic, I told Ti-Guy that I wanted the Liberal Party of Canada to die, because they deceived progressive-minded Canadians and made them believe that they could have their cake and eat it too.

Ti-Guy replied something to the effect that by giving the centrist majority of Canadians a compromise between the extremist Conservatives and the loopy NDP we could avoid disaster. Without the Liberals, the majority of Liberal supporters would stupidly migrate over to the Conservatives (with whom they feel more comfortable).

At the time, I wasn't sure that the thesis was worth the explosion in homelessness, in poverty, in the massive decline in our manufacturing sector, the occupation of Afghanistan and the subsequent war crimes, the increase in inequality, the creeping privatization of health care, the dallying with missile defence, and on and on and everything that Liberal governance represented.

And what if it's the case that "centre cannot hold"? I realize that for a long time I predicted economic collapse, sincerely believing that the debt-crisis, or the dot-com bubble's bursting, or something else meant that our economic system had run out of steam, only to be proved wrong. But this latest crisis, I've waited, and hedged my bets, but there's enough weakness, enough elite stupidity, enough hopelessness, that it looks like a collapse is inevitable. About a month ago, some dude was on a business news program, saying with all the confidence in the world "Demand will come back." I could only wonder where it was supposed to come back from. Seriously, check out those links and ask yourself where demand is supposed to come from? And then, remember that "demand" as he's talking about it, means "effective demand" to consume more and more useless junk, the production of which will plunder the world's resources and destroy the environment. Their system fails on its own terms and in the bigger picture it's going to kill us all.

If that's the case, what do we need with some mewling bunch of neo-liberal, arrogant, elite dumb-fucks who helped bring us to this sorry pass?

There is going to be a reckoning. We have the worst possible political party in Canada in power to meet it with a majority government. Let's make the choice for Canadians as stark as possible: the intellectual bankruptcy of capitalism versus the humanity of social democracy. The last thing we want is a political party lying to Canadians that they can "rise up" to the challenge with rhetoric and lies.