Saturday, March 31, 2012

The Globe & Mail and the CBC

So yesterday I'm walking past a Globe & Mail newspaper box and there's a headline: "Harper's Modest Revolution" (or something like) that and I thought: "I'm completely uninterested."

The only commentary that really interests me about stephen harper is debate about how long his prison sentence will be. I don't care about anything else about him. He is not my prime minister. He has no authority over me. He has eviscerated the traditions that he now claims to base his authority on. He is a small-minded, petty, untalented shill for corporate thieves. Nothing more. The only question is the tactically-best way to remove him. Because he is going to be removed. He is going to be hauled before a judge and he is going to be judged and then he is going to prison.

And, that having been said, his propaganda-media enabler, the Glib n' Stale, the Grope n' Flail, "Canada's National Disgrace" which endorsed harper despite his blatant contempt for Parliament, and which continues to treat him as a legitimate prime minister despite his party's massive electoral fraud campaign, has revealed itself as both morally and intellectually bankrupt.

You know, "liberals," "conservatives," and even some "libertarians" like to accuse us leftists of being inherent stalinists or nazis. Socialism or communism is like a religion to us, and no crime on this earth is beneath us if it means ushering in the promised land blah, blah, blah, ... collectivist madness blah, blah, blah, .... weak this or that, blah-fucking-blah.

So these defenders of liberal democracy and all that other stuff, what about them? They have no credibility. Democratic dissent is crushed (see G20 or Occupy Wall Street). Wars based on lies are tolerated (see invasion of Iraq). Wars without democratic debate at all are allowed (see assault on Libya). The torture and illegal imprisonment of Canadian citizens is permitted (see Maher Arar, Omar Khadr). War crimes and their official cover-up are allowed, even if the suppression means temporarily shutting-down Parliament. And now, the USA is leading the way in the killing of its own citizens (see the Harvard constitutional scholar President Barack Obama's assassination program). Whistle-blowers are unjustly imprisoned and tortured (see Bradley Manning).

All of these massive crimes are enabled by CORPORATE media, because the capitalist system is decaying and it cannot buy-off its critics or it sees no need to. Capitalism puts profit above human life. Capitalism cannot see that the survival of human society or the natural environment are more important than profit. Capitalism cannot even grasp that society and the environment are necessary for the existence of capitalist profit.

The Globe & Mail's regard for Canadian Parliamentary Democracy is exposed as non-existent with its endorsing of harper in the 2011 election and its subsequent self-interested minimization of harper's blatant electoral fraud as some sort of "scandal du jour." This electoral fraud was a targeted assault on the core of representative democracy. If you cannot grasp that Globe & Mail publishers and editors and columnists, then your opinion on Canadian politics is worth exactly shit. You have nothing of value to say and there is precisely zero importance for your opinions or criticisms of anything. You have just voluntarily removed yourself from the discussion.

Good-bye.

Which brings me to the CBC and its 10% budget cut at the hands of the gibbering gnome, Finance Minister Jimbo Flaherty. As an institution created by the Liberal Mackenzie-King government and persisting with different appointments and managers across several decades under one of the two main liberal-capitalist parties, you are obviously a part of the system. You might reflect some of the other competing trends in this country as a result of the official mandate that serves as a fig-leaf to cover corporate rule in this country, but you are definitely wedded to the Canadian-capitalist power structure, hence your celebration of our brave troops in Afghanistan and your inability to identify class warfare when it is obvious.

But know this CBC: You were created at a time when the state was relatively much more important to capitalist development than is presently the case. The massive level of wealth inequality in North America has given the capitalist class gigantic resources which they can use for propaganda purposes (as well as police-military suppression of democracy purposes, financial sector manipulation purposes, and etc.,). The main point is that the class of people for whom someone like Ezra Levant is a tolerable mouthpiece, thinks that you're both irrelevant and intolerable.

You need to realize that as an institution you have to fight back and as individuals you have to fight back. Canada is a cultural colony of the USA. There aren't that many jobs in this country and if the CBC is destroyed, as individuals a lot of you will be out of work.

The world is changing CBC. The postwar compromise (and much else besides) has been destroyed. Are you going to adapt or are you going to cower and cringe as more and more is taken from you until it is too late?

Friday, March 30, 2012

Budget? Electoral Fraud!

Big surprise. The imbecilic Flaherty has cooked up another demonstration of his blinkered incompetence. I mean no disrespect to Dawg. I'm actually glad to have read his account of Flaherty's latest stupid budget.

But for me, the big deal is still the fact that Flaherty's party has an illegitimate majority. We aren't bound to respect it because harper didn't respect the majority in Parliament when it was opposed to him, thus releasing us from any obligation to respect his majority.

That bit of fairness is still on, and always has been.

Yet another reason (as if the first one wasn't enough) is that harper's majority of seats was won through fraud. He's a con-man. He's a criminal. He's a fraud. He's a lying piece of shit. If it weren't for his fraud, Jack Layton would have been Prime Minister at the head of a coalition betwixt the NDP and the Liberals.

So, not only is the fact of harper's majority irrelevant in the first place, it isn't even genuine.

For me, the big story yesterday was the testimony of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Maynard of Elections Canada. The CBC's wonderful Kady O'Malley reports:
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand more than lived up to his billing as star witness at committee, and provided a somewhat unexpected, but entirely welcome update on the file to a packed-to-the-rafters-and-then-some committee room. According to Mayrand, as of today, the agency has accepted more than 800 specific complaints -- covering approximately 200 ridings, a number considerably higher than pretty much anyone had been expecting -- and 250 open files currently before the elections commissioner.
O'Malley goes on to say that the sweeping nature of this voter suppression effort shocked the harpercon stooges present, including the buffoonish Dean Del Mastro:
12:31

Kady:
Oh, and now, Dean Del Mastro will play us off with a petulant tirade against "damaging" leaks from Elections Canada -- as per unnamed reporters who have apparently complained about such to Del Mastro. Mayrand points out that Del Mastro's charge appears to be a vague allegation itself, prompting laughter from everyone but Del Mastro. Don't mess with Marc Mayrand. He may look like just another bureaucrat, but he has bite.
Here's the thing for me: People laughed because Del Mastro is a fucking clown. But this is deadly serious. Everyone in that room KNOWS that the harpercons are guilty of these "dirty tricks." But this isn't the USA. where a debased electoral process means that "tricks" are just officially "tricks." This is Canada and these "tricks"are also "crimes." And they're crimes because, while we're damned close, we aren't as debased politically by capitalism as the USA is. In the end, Del Mastro is spinning and babbling to avoid getting caught out in a "trick." But he's also a "crook." He is going to go to prison or there will be hell to pay.

And let me tell you something: 2012 is going to be a summer of discontent against this criminal, anti-democratic scum.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Shorter Anti-Democratic harpercon Trolls: "It's YOUR fault if you don't know how to complain about our electoral fraud!"

That's something else I've heard, and I'm sure that I will hear again. These shameless, lying pieces of shit.

More Stuff Like the Quebec Students' Protests Please!

You GOTTA love it! (Either that or you're a 1% scum-bag or a stupid chump!)
Tens of thousands of students filled the streets of Montreal Thursday in a mass protest against a planned hike in tuition fees that they say will undermine Quebec's long-standing commitment to keeping university education accessible to people of all incomes.
The increasingly radical student protest is one reason why I hope we always have Quebec. In the same way that the stink of US-American politics infects us, so too does the more vibrant social-democracy and autonomous political thinking of Quebec serve as an antidote to right-wing miasma.

Yes, Quebec tuitions are far lower than any other province's. I wonder why that is? Because Quebec voters aren't stupid chumps who put up with all sorts of bullshit from the political tools of their corporate overlords. They stand up for what's theirs.

I have had my fill of stupid right-wing chumps and ignorant air-heads. My side is with the people who fight back. Not the carpers who fight the weak to compensate for the beatings they endure from the powerful.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

$5,000 AND Five Years in Prison

Ahem:Link
The maximum penalties for violating these sections of the Elections Act are severe: a fine of up to $5,000 and imprisonment for up to five years, or both. Moreover, a person convicted of such an offence may also be ordered to compensate anyone who has suffered damages as a consequence of the offence and to take any other reasonable measure to ensure compliance with the act.
Let's put it this way: If the Conservative Party of Canada was the central organizing body of the illegal voter suppression scheme then the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada was the actual group of conspirators.

As well as returning the money from Elections Canada for having obtained such and such a percentage of the vote in each riding that is under dispute, the Conservative Party of Canada should be fined $5,000 for EACH and EVERY person they called. EACH and EVERY specific attempt at voter suppression.

Then, give a five-year sentence to every leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (from its actual leader, stephen harper, to its president, and etc., etc., on down the line) for EACH instance of a violation of our electoral laws.

We must demand nothing less than the total destruction of this threat to the Canadian way of life. At least to set an example for others. This is not "modern politics." The stinking puss of Karl Rove-style political and electoral fraud is not an unavoidable way of doing politics. It is a blight. It is a crime. It has no place in a functioning democracy. It is a sickness that must be eliminated.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Multiverse

Distracted, busy, insanely busy, working but nothing to show for it. Here's a video:

Monday, March 26, 2012

We WERE Robbed

Never forget.

And carry yourselves accordingly.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Spam Filter

A long weekend with family and friends. Not much time, energy or inclination to post. So, something that I've been meaning to announce:

Dear "Full Name" (aka: "Anonymous") ... [you're the dude who imagines you'll somehow drive me to suicide, among other things], "Way, Way Up" and "Wayne" (aka: "L. Wayne Mathison") ... I just want you to know that I've discovered the beauty of the spam filter here on blogger and yahoo.

Just want you to know that from here on in, EVERYTHING you attempt to communicate to me automatically goes into the spam file which is automatically emptied every month or so.

I want each troll to grasp how inconsequential it is to me. And forget about me even checking my spam folders to check out your reactions to this. If you had been somehow able to ever grab a clue you'd know that I DON'T CARE how you respond to this confirmation of your suspicions of your utter worthlessness.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Capitalist Media and the NDP

Dr Dawg comments on the horrible coverage of the NDP leadership convention by the CBC:
Watching the supremely self-satisfied, snickering commentators on CBC tonight should cement the impressions of the media held by those of us who are actually interested in politics in Canada. The CBC continues to curry favour with Stephen Harper, and it arranged a commentator panel tonight to administer a deliberate hatchet job.
The thing is, we are a country dominated by Toronto financial sector and the Calgary oil sector. Our national broadcaster, the CBC is dominated by the political economic leadership of this society. So it stands to reason that a party, still nominally dedicated to social democracy, is intolerable to them.

That's why all these pieces of shit endorsed harper in the last election, even when he was clearly guilty of contempt of Parliament.

That's why they're all so quick to dismiss the sickening abomination of harpercon electoral fraud.

That's why they report far more about what the leader of the third place Liberal Party does than they did the interim Official Opposition Leader Nycole Turmel did.

That's why there's been zero outrage that Jack Layton was robbed of the premiership while dying of cancer.

This is what we're up against people. The capitalist class only respects pseudo-democracy and only when it aligns with their own interests.

There are decent journalists among them, but the system is dominated by class interests and we mustn't forget that.

Friday, March 23, 2012

E-Health, ORNGE: AdScam Ontario?

Just saying that if you wanted to funnel public money to your friends in order to create a well-funded political base who would support you at election time in return for further contracts, the swag so liberally dispersed via E-Health and ORNGE (around $1.7 billion) would be the way to do it.

Such a scheme, were it real, would make Brian "on the take" Mulroney look like a boy newspaper salesman.

One thing is for sure: Thanks to McGuinty's tax-cuts, anyone who got wealthier as a result of Ontario Liberal largesse or incompetence saved a lot at tax time! (Meanwhile hospitals are under-funded, families on welfare are suffering, hospital beds are empty and on and on.

Fucking scum-bags.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

No Majority? That's It Then. Time For Opposition MPs to Take a Stand


From Alison at Creekside (via a whole whack of great people) we get this bombshell.

Ain't that something?

Now, given the fact that the harpercons are using their bullshit majority to ram through any and all of their garbage legislation, and are ignoring Parliament, and are forcing all parliamentary business to be held in secret, ... it seems incumbent upon our opposition MPs to look seriously at this unprecedented electoral fraud, weigh it against the harpercons' continued abuses of Parliament, and come to a decision. If the harpercons are using their majority to make a joke out of Parliament AND that majority was built on fraud, then perhaps these abuses shouldn't be validated with the opposition's grudging participation?

This is serious stuff here. It doesn't get any more serious than this. This is the heart and soul of what passes for democracy in Canada. I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that opposition MPs resisting stephen harper's crimes would be playing a dangerous game, setting dangerous precedents.

The dangerous precedent would be allowing this nonsense to continue.

By all means, let Elections Canada do its work while we work on other options as well.

But if, at the end of the day, the harpercons do not have a legitimate majority, then all the gloves should come off. There has to be a protest from the Opposition.

We're quite close to where I thought we'd be during the last election (which was fought after the Bloc, the Liberals and the NDP finally stood together against harper's abuse of Parliament):
harper will have his minority, but it will be irrelevant. We don't elect presidents. Prime ministers are made in Parliament. They are made BY Parliament.

After he loses power irrevocably, harper must be dragged before public inquiries and forced to come clean on what he did in Afghanistan. Those generals who were given the Colvin emails when Parliament was being told that "national security" issues prevented that body from seeing them, must be forced to say who gave them to them.

harper should be tried for war crimes and if he is guilty, then he should be hauled off to serve the hard time he planned for the poor that his other policies created.

Prison for harper!
It is a necessary thing for our democracy that this criminal scum be exposed and then incarcerated.

OH YEAH! One more thing: If harper had been returned with a minority and the Opposition, tired of his anti-democratic antics, had formed a coalition immediately, it would have meant that Jack Layton would have been Canada's first New Democratic Party Prime Minister!

Perhaps he should have a portrait with all the other past PMs. And harper's could be taken down and burned. (I wouldn't replace harper's with Layton's. I wouldn't want to defile Layton's portrait. It could remain a blank of shame on the wall. Something to explain to future visitors during guided tours, about how dangerously low our country fell as a democracy.)

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Circle is Tightening on the harpercons

Don't forget that people. This cabal of criminal scum would presume to have the RIGHT to rule over us even if their entire government was elected by fraud. THAT is how little regard they have for democracy.

This Rae attack-ad stupidity is just a sign of their desperation. A bunch of still photographs and a voice-over of hypocritical cliches that have been circulating since 1995. Nothing but an incompetent liar's attempt to change the subject.

Elections Canada is doing its work. Tens of thousands of Canadians are getting active. Forgive us if, as Canadian citizens who have known overwhelmingly free and fair elections for decades, if we're a little rusty in figuring out how to respond to a government that earned its majority thanks to a centrally-directed criminal conspiracy of electoral fraud.

So many Canadians are still grappling with the reality that this is for keeps and we're faced with a gang of rogues who will stop at nothing.

But they really have no escape. They've repeated the "in-and-out" scandal. They've had American election strategists campaigning for them. They've got people testifying that they were told to lie and say they were from Elections Canada and that they were giving out information they later discovered was fraudulent.

Finally, as we see with young "conservative" airhead Michael Sona, the harpercons are completely willing to abandon their own to save themselves. Expect the whole party to turn in and begin to devour each other as the law and the enraged citizenry advance closer and closer. They won't be able to muster the wherewithal to attack Bob Rae or anyone else. harper, Clement, Baird, Flaherty, and assorted other scum and villainy will look like a bunch of men trying to throw children and babies out of a lifeboat on the sinking Titanic.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Afghanistan and now Libya

When will North American fall for the next installment of beneficial imperialism? Syria? Sudan?

The reason why we shouldn't implore our governments to "do something" about an atrocity somewhere is that our governments are comprised of evil men (with a smattering of evil women - You've still got a long way to go baby!) who are either already complicit in this barbarism (witness Canadian "intelligence" agencies subcontracting torture to the Asaad regime in Syria) or they'll use your pleas as an excuse to get involved out of their own revolting self-interest and most likely make things worse.

Monday, March 19, 2012

A Friend From Europe

I met up with a long-time friend of mine who has been living in Europe for the past decade or so. She's been living in Denmark, which, despite not being part of the peninsula, is apparently a Scandinavian democracy.

Of the Danes, she says they're very insular and cold. She says that coming home to Canada has been a relief in some ways. In Kensington Market some people on the sidewalk asked her and her friends sitting at a patio if they knew where a particular store was. Her group told them where it was and then they exchanged some pleasantries about the weather. My friend told me that had been such a treat: In Denmark nobody would ask complete strangers such a question for fear of looking like idiots, and if they were the ones being asked they would nervously provide the answer and nothing more, in case the people who had approached them were psychos or con-artists or something.

On the other hand, she said Canada was a tragedy. We have so much potential, but everything is being hoarded by the wealthiest, and everybody else is mired in debt. In Denmark she knows people who are unemployed but they receive a relatively generous stipend from the government and they maintain themselves as productive citizens (working on projects of measurable value that sometimes lead to new employment or income) while at the same conducting intensive job searches.

Here, young Canadians in their late-twenties and early-thirties appear to eke out marginal existences at dismally paying jobs or they subsist on meager unemployment or welfare. Canadian young adults spend a lot of time playing video games and smoking pot. Another difference she found is that Danes discuss political-economic issues using facts and agreed-upon understanding of how the world works. North Americans argue over fantasies and reason according to the internal logic of various conspiracy theories. Canada's televised news is a laughable monstrosity, almost (to her eyes) indistinguishable from the neo-liberal christo-fascist pap of the USA's.

But the one thing that really struck me about her observations is the way her and European friends responded to the news of the nation-wide electoral fraud of the harpercons. In the first place, to her and the Danes, these are not "dirty tricks." They're CRIMES. They're CRIMES because they're illegal and because they violate what should be the foundation of any genuine democracy; the unimpeded exercise of the individual franchise. Obviously I agree, but I was hearing about this uniform expression of utter repugnance from Europeans, rather than from my fellow Canadian citizens (the tiny blog-o-sphere withstanding). They were all shocked that Canada had "fallen so far" as a mature, respectable democracy.

Remember that term: "Mature Democracy"? That's how Jack Layton described the European systems where coalition governments weren't (often literally) regarded as being the work of the devil. (An observation that earned Layton the scorn of the pea-brained Charles Adler.)

stephen harper has done all he can to foster this state of miserable ignorance and misinformation. he has done all that he can to foster a culture of contempt for democracy. he does this because it serves his needs and it agrees with his agenda. The more stupid, deluded, apathetic and cynical Canadians are about their system, the more will WE leave him free to perpetrate his crimes in freedom. In the final analysis, if harper owed his power COMPLETELY to fraud, it wouldn't register with either him or his supporters, not even in the slightest. The important thing for these scum-bags and morons is their own victory. The only thing that would disturb them would be a defeat. And no matter how honest or total their defeat was, if you think the picture they have in their heads of us as "sore losers" is over-the-top, just wait for their comeuppance. You're going to hear moaning and whining and threats of violence like you never thought possible in Canada.

I welcome it. I welcome it when their leaders and their crimes are dragged into the light of day and exposed and harper, Baird, Clement, Flaherty, ad nauseum are themselves dragged off to prison. I'll enjoy it when the most shameless harpercon zombies stand on their front lawns pissing and moaning about liberal witch-hunts and AdScam and other inanities and I'll tell them (as I've taken to doing more and more the past few years) to shut the fuck up.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Patrick Ross Isn't "Depressed"

As part of my ongoing campaign of posting any sort of shit that comes to mind just to make a post (because responding to the Conservative Party of Canada's electoral fraud CRIMES are too important for my paltry blogging efforts) I'm just going to talk about Canadian Cynic's failed nemesis Patrick Ross.

Long story short, as part of his personal vendetta against Canadian Cynic, post-pubescent blowhard Patrick Ross typed a bunch of libelous claims about CC using CC's real name. CC sued Ross and Ross, for one reason or another, failed to appear in court and, therefore, a default judgment was made ordering him to pay CC $85,000 in damages and to take down the libelous statements.

Ross, being a typical conservative, decided that instead of accepting the consequences for his actions, refused to take down the statements and went to ground. When he was finally forced to show up in court and account for himself, Ross said all sorts of curious things and also posted on his blog that he was suicidally depressed.

Ross isn't depressed. Ross is still posting his shit-for-brains right-wing drivel and attacking his enemies with his usual boorish intensity. What Ross is genuinely feeling is referred to by the medical community as "Upset." Ross opened his big fat mouth (or typed with his big fat fingers) one stupid thing too many and it's cost him. Ross has dropped his life in a steaming vat of dog-shit and he's dimly aware that it's all his fault. But Ross isn't having any crisis of the soul. The rancid slab of mad-cow would perk up in an instant if a space-alien fairy appeared and paid off all his legal debts. Ross is just a snivelling, whining, self-pitying and stupid sack of shit, refusing to take ownership of his own bad decisions.

Him and Bruce Carson and Michael Sona should get themselves in a circle-jerk about how tough their lives are and leave the rest of us out of their blubbering.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Electoral Fraud Food For Thought

Just drawing your attention to this:
There is also a question of what an inquiry will uncover and, importantly, what recommendations it could possibly make. At the very least the Elections Canada investigation should be allowed to come to completion and, at that time, the RCMP and the legal system should be brought to bear on the case. Until the scope is understood - and allegations verified - a commission of inquiry is simply jumping the gun.
I still don't know where I stand. An Inquiry can compel testimony and evidence, something I'm not sure Elections Canada can do.

[h/t to Dave at "The Galloping Beaver."]

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Awesome!!! Shitty actually.

I decided to go to "progressive bloggers.ca" to see whether or not one specific blogger had anything new and insightful to say about the harpercon electoral fraud scandal. Instead I had to endure this:
Gordon is speaking great language for Liberals. Gordon is speaking the language of empathy, community and responsibility.
"Empathy, community and responsibility" 'eh? Impolitical is a smart woman. But you know what? The Liberal record of betrayal of "empathy, community and responsibility" is so basically obvious that I'm not even going to provide links to the rise in homelessness, wage stagnation, income inequality, and environmental failure. Impolitical displays willful ignorance of all of this. Remember the "Red Book"? Seriously? Do you remember the "Red Book"?

Bah! I was going to go through that blog entry and give it a detailed thrashing, but there's too much nonsense to deal with. I'll let this just speak for itself.
"We need to help people, right here, right now...We have to be a community. We have to help each other. We have to show Stephen Harper what true Canadian values look like. People helping people." Canadian values! Yes, progressive Liberals speaking about what Canadian values are! More please!
...
The "People. Planet. Profits." slogan captures well what Liberals are about. Blessedly, there's no talk of centrism here, no resort to typical tired platitudes.
...
What is going on here? Is it possible that someone in Canadian politics is trying to make people interested in voting again? Challenging them. Giving them something to raise their eyebrows about. Yes, by all means, more fun in our politics please! And that's not to say it's fluff. The serious messages on the environment, child care and pensions come through. But it sure helps when it's not a chore to take a look when people constantly tell you how busy they are and how they don't have time for politics. It's not the same old, same old.
And the main thing that irks me about this nonsense is that this Liberal airhead is doing nothing but challenging the NDP airhead for Jack Layton's old seat. All this lying about "empathy, community and responsibility" is just transparent nonsense intended to take the seat of one centre-left opposition party and give it to a centre-right opposition party. In the meantime, harper gets to run rampant with his fraudulently elected majority.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Dear USA: You Can Still Torture Canadians

Thanks go to pogge for sharing this article from Prism Magazine: "Secret Cable Reveals How Ottawa Colluded with Washington to Blunt Fallout From a Security Case Gone Horribly Wrong". It's based on information from Wikileaks (who might have blood on their hands says the blood-soaked Obama administration).

In the article, the incompetents from the RCMP work with the psychopaths from US intelligence to "limit the damage" from the Arar Inquiry to their ability to toss around names and groundless allegations that result in innocent Canadians being tortured in Syria.

The cable says Giuliano Zaccardelli, who was the RCMP commissioner at the time, “fears that the recommendations (of Justice O’Connor) will seek to undermine his institution’s independence and its ability to freely and proactively share information with us.”

In a meeting with the U.S. legal attaché, the diplomatic cover usually given to the senior representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Canada, Zaccardelli said that “the hostile nature of the questions put to him by the (Arar) commission leads him to believe there will be a strong move to restrict flexibility in information-sharing and the conduct of investigations.

“Law enforcement officials will simply have to adapt and develop work-arounds to allow for continued effectiveness in investigations and prosecutions. Overall, Zaccardelli believes everything can be overcome through close cooperation, but it will take a concerted effort to make it work.”

Mr. Zaccardelli “regrets that some of the proposed recommendations will make it even more cumbersome to exchange information and confirmed that the fallout from Arar has already made it more difficult to conduct joint law enforcement operations, employ U.S. informants, and monitor conversations.”

Let's just remember something here: Who are the dangerous terrorist masterminds that CSIS and the RCMP have thwarted? Besides the four innocent men tortured in Syria, and the hapless and entrapped young men and teenagers in the "Toronto 18" that is? Can you think of anyone?

These are the super-cops who infiltrated the super-secret, well-nigh impenetrable circle of villains who planned on bringing down the entire corporate state maybe breaking some windows at the Toronto G20 Summit. In that heroic operation, our intrepid security forces did gain access to the evil-doers inner circle and, with only $1 billion plus in expenses, .... er, um, ... well, .... UTTERLY FAILED to prevent the window-smashing. (Oh, but they did brutalize some random people the next day!)

Given the paucity of actual accomplishments by our boys in red serge, it seems that all the restrictions on their freedom that Zaccardelli and his successor Bill Elliot were wailing about would not have had any significant impact on anything at all.

The article points out that neither the US intelligence agents or the RCMP expressed any remorse for having sent an innocent man to be tortured. Not only do they lack that essential humanity, they don't even reflect upon its significance for their so-called "work." The terrible fact of their own uselessness never occurs to them as they double-down on their efforts to torture even more of us as a result of their paranoid insanity.

Dear EnMasse: Fuck Off

Note: My response to the harpercons' voter suppression sleaze is going to occupy my work in the 3-d world. It is too important for the scatter-shot ranting and overall uselessness that is blogging.

POST

I left a message at my old discussion board EnMasse. Discussion boards had been a big part of my political development and I thought I should make a definitive statement about my exiting from the last one I was participating at. I said I was leaving because there didn't seem to be any point to staying at a place where the options were to 1) Agree with everyone that capitalism, patriarchy, war, ecocide, etc., were bad, and 2) Disagree on something, whereupon you would be attacked, insulted and misinterpreted by clueless dolts like "Agent Smith."

I suppose that if you want to INSIST on seeing things that aren't there, you could have seen my statement about my leaving and the reasons for it as being a cry for sympathy and support. But there's a novel concept going around. READ WHAT THE WRITER ACTUALLY SAYS!

Of course I was interested in whatever responses my statement received. So, yeah, I looked. I'm pretty much done with the board though, so I'm not replying there. Two posters have gotten it into their heads that I'm asking for the board to play sad violins over my leaving. And, given all the tragedies in the world today, perhaps I'm asking too much for something as trivial as my decision to withdraw from the board.

Jesus fucking Christ. This is why I decided to have my own blog. I can vent however I want without some fucking moderator popping in and asking everyone to tone it down. I can simply delete posts that insist on completely missing the point or attacking arguments that weren't made.

Perhaps it was a cry for sympathy. It wasn't, but maybe it could be seen that way. But you know what? It's a pretty serious charge to say that I was comparing my sufferings at the hands of "Agent Smith" and the asshole "RonB" to the sufferings of the Afghans at the hands of NATO imperialists. And before you unload on me for having done so, perhaps look to see whether I did, in fact, do so.

It also stands to reason that no one on EnMasse can now tell anyone about their weekend plans or any such trivialities, forever more, because what do their silly North American lives have to do with the Third World War between capitalism and humanity?

The whole point that I was trying to make in the last thread that I participated in and which I alluded to in my final post was that we have to learn to disagree like adults. We shouldn't turn on long-time comrades and insult them the same way we do right-wing trolls, just because we disagree. Unfortunately, neither the participants, nor the moderators were able to grasp this elementary point, rendering the whole project utterly futile.

Just to be clear. This post here is, like my post at EnMasse, NOT a cry for anyone to break out the sad violins over my agony. This is me taking advantage of my blog to vent about how EnMasse compunded error upon error with regards to my statements. If you've read this far, you obviously had some time to kill. Well, you killed it. And it is what it is.Link

Monday, March 12, 2012

Cheaters

Imagine if you lost a fair chunk of change at a neighbourhood poker game. To the asshole neighbour who nobody really likes. The guy who blatantly lies to your face about pretty much everything. Then it starts to turn out that there's a marked card.

"It's not a marked card! It's an old deck and shit happens!" The asshole claims.

(Last card game, he swiped poker chips from players sitting beside him. Then he claims he legitimately thought they were his and they'd just been accidentally pushed away from him. He swore up and down that that's what happened but he eventually gave the chips back saying he'd "agree to disagree" as to who they belonged to and how he got hold of them.)

Then, more and more cards turn out to be marked. "My kids must've been fucking with them!"

Anyway, you get the picture.

What do you think? Should we let the guy keep his "winnings"?

Thursday, March 8, 2012

International Women's Day

Ever hear of Lee Miller? Here's her Wikipedia page too!

While we're at it, here's Kay Sage as well.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Why I've Been Blogging About Trolls

Because I'm busy. The big story, ... the HUGE story is the harpercon assault on the integrity of our electoral process. And that story requires serious attention which I don't have the time for, but which Dr. Dawg, Montreal Simon, Alison at Creekside and Sixth Estate (among others) are doing.

But I must admit to having gotten a kick out of the right-wing trolls running out of the wood work to either justify or belittle electoral behaviour that would have them reaching for their guns were it done to them. So that's what I've been blogging about. The damage-control and spin of these moronic hypocrites.

What they don't understand is that in doing this harper has torn the last shreds of his legitimacy away. He is now exposed as the entirely foul and corrupt creature that he is. It might be this month, it might be in a year or so, but harper is finished.

(I will even arm-wrestle carmichael to insist on that judgment!)

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

A Blast From The Past

Read this for shits n' giggles.

How a "conservative"/troll thinks ....

Sane person: "Electoral fraud is a stab at the heart of democracy. It looks like the Conservative Party of Canada engaged in it. We need to find out. We need to get to the bottom of it. We need a public inquiry."

Conservative/Troll: "Ha! Stupid lefties can't take it! Sore losers! It's a smear job! It didn't change the vote anyway! It never happened! B-b-but the Librullls!!! Scamad!"

[Other Conservative/Troll] "Psst! AdScam!"

Conservative/Troll: "Whatever! (I was just a kid back then. I don't really know what that was all about.)"

[Other Conservative/Troll]: "Shut the fuck up!"

thwap: "What a buncha fucking goofs."

Conservative/Troll: "Name-caller! Lefty fuckwad! Name-caller! It's funny, you're so sad! You're insane! I will FUCK YOU UP if you insult me you lefty racist faggot!! blarglblehaterh!!!! Ragggrrrh!!!!"

.... Such is the level of Canada's political culture.

Monday, March 5, 2012

"Wayne"

You know, in some respects, "Wayne" or "L. Wayne Mathison," would be the gift that keeps on giving. Like most right-wing shit-heads there's a lot of unintended comedy in his comments. The beauty of consistency though is that I never have to waste time thinking: "Is this comment from the banned right-wing troll a real gem that I should post? Or is it just another unremarkable, tiresome brain-fart and if I post it, I'll only encourage him to type more?" So, it's consistency and the delete button for old "Wayne."
Link
As I said in the comments here, I posted this comment from "L. Wayne Mathison" because I didn't know that it was my old friend "Wayne" until I saw his smiling mug beside the name after I published it. I'd come up with a response to "Wayne"'s effort and decided to make that one exception, given the circumstances.

Still stinging from my response to his latest effort, "L. Wayne Mathison" sent two more posts that went straight to the delete bin. Both of them were self-pitying, self-righteous drivel about how, by not allowing them to pollute my blog, I'm somehow denying his freedom of speech, and that my banning of him is evidence of how much I fear his mind. (Or something like that.)

Anyway, here is the comment:
I feel sympathy for you. All you have post after post after post is name calling and projection of your progressive psychopathology on other people that don't think the same way you do. The thing that is funny, is all you have is name calling... which means you lose... over and over and over again. Sad.
Let the good times roll!

"I feel sympathy for you." That's nice.

"All you have post after post after post is name calling" Well that's just not true! It's not true at all. Sure there's a lot of name calling. But anyone except a stretching right-wing hack can see that's a lie.

"and projection of your progressive psychopathology on other people that don't think the same way you do." What the hell does that even mean?? "Progressive psychopathology?" That would mean my belief in such things as that human activity caused global warming, that taxes should be raised and the money spent on expanding the welfare state? That terrorist suspects have legal rights and its dangerous to empower the state to incarcerate people indefinitely without oversights? Is that my "progressive psychpathology"? And I "project" it onto people like Ezra Levant and stephen harper?????? Whaaa??????

"The thing that is funny, .." Okay ...

"is all you have is name calling..."

Which isn't true!

"which means you lose... over and over and over again."

Except for the fact that I don't just name-call. So I don't lose! HOOORAY!!!!!

"Sad."

I thought it was "The thing that is funny"?????

Shit-head.

Now, everybody see what I did there. I called "Wayne" a "shit-head." But is that ALL that I did? NO! (HOORAY!!!) I pointed out that "Wayne" was uttering a false-hood when he said that all I do is name-call. (I suppose I could PROVE that that's not all I do, but if "Wayne" has missed all the analysis that is the source of my vitriol against my enemies up to this point, I think copying and pasting an example of it and splaying it before his uncomprehending gaze would be a self-evident waste of time. So fuck it.)

Then I showed how "Wayne's" attempt at profundity, re: "projecting my progressive psychopathology" is an incoherent mess.

Then I showed that "Wayne's" second attempt to be profound (as well as condescending) ended up with his tripping over his own shoelaces and falling face-first into a pile of dog-shit. "You know, it's funny that you [don't do what I accuse you of doing]. It's really sad." "You know, it's funny. It's sad." "Funny." "Sad."

To sum it up: "Wayne" you will always be a shit-head.

Now go! And do not darken my door again! Shit-head!

I Love the Smell of harpercon Fear in the Morning!

Hah! You know, the funniest thing about this whole subversion of the democratic electoral process is that harper might have had his majority, albeit a smaller one, without all the desperate, sleazy, anti-democratic vote-suppression and fraud.

But now, even though witless harpercon trolls like Sandy Crux are bleating: "B-b-but our fraud didn't really have an impact!" the fact of the matter is that harper has placed the final stake in the heart of his political legitimacy. And it's calling his entire election into question.

And the pathetic harpercon scum are scared. You can tell! They're all feeling like Patrick Ross, slouched in his chair, empty beer bottles and "Doritos" bags scattered about him, drunkenly and sullenly contemplating his upcoming court appearance.

The harpercons are scared!

"Let us keep our stolen election!" they whine. "You're sore losers just because we cheated!'

So many banned harpercon hacks have been trying to post here over the last week, their comments beginning with false bravado, but descending into incoherent rage as each day passes with no sign of the scrutiny over their stupid party's criminal behaviour letting up.

Even if our system fails AGAIN, we will not. Stealing an election to win control over a Parliament you've already defecated upon means you're a fraud. You're a sick, twisted joke. Your legitimacy to order us around has evaporated. It's over harper. It's over harpercons. Whether you acknowledge it or not. It's over.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Notice How the harpercon Cheaters are Calling Us "Sore Losers"?

No shame and no brains.

stephen harper doesn't respect the institute of Parliament. He doesn't respect the electoral process. But he expects us to respect his authority?

What a fucking twisted fantasy-land that piece of shit lives in!

Saturday, March 3, 2012

March 11th, the Old "In-Out" and A Truly Useless Article

First up. I've heard there was a protest in Vancouver calling for an independent inquiry into the possible election fraud that gave harper his majority. On March 11th, two further protests are being called for Ottawa and Toronto. I'll be at the Toronto rally:

TORONTO – A Canada-wide protest against fraudulent and voter-suppressive ‘Robocalls’ during the 2011 election campaign will take place March 11, 2012, and the logistics-planning for Toronto’s rally is happening 6 p.m. Friday, March 2nd, at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church’s Garden room. Various people from community organizations and online activist groups, including Canadians Against Fraudulent Elections, Occupy Canada, and Democracy Canada are endorsing the national rally campaign.

Ordinary people not generally associated with, or even aligned with, the activist community have expressed a desire to see the resignation of Stephen Harper, along with by-elections in each riding affected by the nefarious “RoboCalls” (automated phone calls intentionally meant to steer voters to non-existent polling stations). This initial planning meeting is expected to draw people from across the political spectrum.

The anti-democratic tactics of marketing companies RMG and RackNine, both of which worked for the Conservative Party during the 2011 election campaign, might have suppressed and otherwise obstructed voters from reaching their actual voting stations. Such actions are punishable by up to five years in prison.

As such, Canadians would like to see accountability, up to and including the firing of the Prime Minister.

Toronto rally organizer Jon Allan is deeply concerned about the ramifications about these calls, saying “Harper has lost the confidence of the country. His government has lost legitimacy; he has not been legitimately bestowed with the authority to govern. He stole the 2011 election."

When responding to the charge that the harpercons are already seasoned election fraudsters given their having pleaded guilty to violating election spending laws with the old "in-out" scandal, the harpercons respond with a statement like: "We honestly thought that what we were doing was permitted by the legislation. It was a mistake, not a deliberate crime."

Now, I think that's bullshit. Because harper and his crew are shameless, lying scuzz-balls. They knew it was wrong/illegal at the time and they're lying now (obviously). They're the guilty ones in this voter suppression effort. They know it. WE know it. The question is what are we going to do about it?

But here's something that people might have missed. There's a possibility that they were up to the same shit in 2011.
"La campagne de Bertin Denis dans Rimouski-Neigette-Témiscouata-Les Basques a versé 15 000,01 $ à la firme torontoise Responsive Marketing Group (RMG) pendant la dernière campagne électorale. Le hic? L'équipe conservatrice locale ignore à quoi a servi cet argent."
Now that's not news to a lot of you. BUT it does put the lie to the harpercon's protests that they weren't knowingly committing electoral fraud in 2006. MAYBE they didn't, but having paid a $52,000 fine for what they did, they should know NOW that it's illegal. But it appears they went and did it again anyway, probably thinking that a small fine was an acceptable price to pay for the benefits of further voter-suppression calls.

Lies, lies, lies, shameless lies. Fraud. Anti-democratic fraud. Enablers of torture. Attackers of public health care. Homophobes. Religious con-men. Hypocrites. Scum.

Okay. So what about that useless article? It was in the Toronto Star a couple of days ago: "Wealth tax: Why it may not be a good idea" and it's just a pointless, easily-demolished set of clee-shays:

In Canada, which faces deficits and entitlement program pressures, a temporary high income surtax or new ultra-high tax bracket for those earning above roughly $200,000 can’t be ruled out, said Jamie Golombek, tax and estate planning managing director at CIBC Private Wealth Management.

“That being said, the wealthy already pay a disproportionate amount of the total tax bill so taxing them even further seems unfair. Perhaps a better solution would be to raise consumption tax by 1 per cent, at least until the budget is balanced.”

Sorry Jamie. But the rich pay more tax BECAUSE THEY MAKE MORE INCOME!!!! A LOT more! And we gave them tax cuts for decades not because we love them, but because we were told that they'd invest it and create jobs. They didn't. Time to put the tax rates back where they were because the tax-cut policy FAILED.

Along with discouraging corporate investment, high taxes have been shown to drive off productive individuals. To combat this, Spain in 2005 enacted the “Beckham Law,” which eases taxes for foreign workers and has had the effect of attracting top sporting talent.

Raising marginal tax rates is a straightforward way to extract more revenue from the rich but a large body of research suggests the effect is to shift income offshore or into less-taxed vehicles such as capital investments. Jurisdictions could hike the tax on capital gains but economists say that tends to stifle job-creating investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking.

And on and on it goes. WHAT job-creating investment are you talking about? What corporate investment has been discouraged? What risk-taking? Mortgage Backed Securities, Collaterallized Debt Obligations or Certified Debt Swaps? Jesus Christ! How many times can an economic theory fail before it stops being repeated respectfully?

Political fraud. Economic fraud. Time to end it.

p.s. What the fuck is wrong with Blogger's formatting???? Stupid piece of shit.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Hey harper! If It's Just a Smear You Got Nothing to Fear!

Dear stephen harper,

You must admit that it's a serious thing that so many ridings have reported confusing or misleading phone calls from people claiming to represent one or the other of Canada's leading political parties right?

This smells like widespread voter suppression efforts.

You can, at the very least, admit that this is important, right?

You're capable of at least that, right?

Then let's have an independent judicial inquiry and get to the bottom of it!

If it's all, as you're now saying, a smear campaign by the Opposition parties, then you have nothing to fear. In fact, you've everything to gain by having a judicial inquiry prove that there's nothing so low that the Liberals or the NDP won't sink to it, ... right?

Let's have the independent judicial inquiry. Because the electoral process must be sacrosanct. The process of democratically choosing our representatives, who will then go on to govern us, is really as sacred a thing as anything political can be.

Prove that it was just stupid Liberal volunteers calling their own supporters up at 9:30 at night and pestering them or telling them to go to the wrong polling station. Just because young Michael Sona admitted to doing it in Guelph (before he realized you were making a patsy out of him) and employees of companies working for your party complained about making misleading phone calls, is no reason for you to be concerned. It's all a Liberal-NDP smear job. Make them wear it harper! Humiliate them! Call their bluff and call that independent judicial inquiry!!

Quick Thought on Harpercon Sense of Entitlement

Idiot right-wing trolls (is there any other kind?) occasionally resort to the Godwinist-like accusations of "Stalinism" against me because, ... um, ... well, I'm not exactly sure really. Something about saying we should enforce environmental legislation or supporting public health care causes these fools to think "totalitarianism."

Whereas their own party's calls for unlimited state spying on our internet activity, the torture of Canadian citizens, the use of tricks to thwart the will of the majority in Parliament, the use of personal medical records to smear veterans' activists, the wholesale violations of civil liberties at the Toronto G20, and etc., etc., is simply good ol' "law n' order" politics or something.

For the past week or so, I've been trying to put myself in their head-space. "How would I really act if I genuinely believed that Islamic Fundamentalists posed a real threat to Canadian society?" or "If I really thought that LRT lines = subways, and I didn't care about how I was going to finance either, what would I think about the actions of Toronto City Council?"

Lately, in response to the exposure of outright sleaze from the Conservative Party of Canada during the last election, some commentators have tried to explain it as a symptom of stephen harper's sense of mission against the formerly all-powerful Liberal Party of Canada. The same sentiments are shared by the party and the faithful: There is a vast liberal conspiracy against these God-fearing, heartland stalwarts, and sometimes you have to get down and dirty when you're battling the forces of evil.

To say this is laughable is to state the obvious. These sad buffoons haven't yet clued into the reality that invading other countries and slaughtering their inhabitants is as close to "evil" as you're likely to get. These economic and democratic cretins are the enemy and the majority of the population recognizes this. Non-Conservatives don't reject you out of partisan spite. Non-Conservatives are the majority because only a minority in any population can be the stupidest. And non-stupid people often can't help laughing at stupid people.

But consider this: The MASSIVE sense of entitlement of these whining cry-babies! Because of the realities of capitalist political culture, the Conservative Party of Canada gets to form the government every once in a while. The NDP never used to come close federally. And yet, these poor little harpercons imagine that they're so oppressed, the system is so stacked against them, that they need to make a mockery of any and all democratic practice in order to obtain their supposedly justifiable victories.

Poor darlings.

But to then have the gall to accuse Canadian democratic socialists of totalitarian tendencies! What a pathetic, revolting spectacle they make.