Nothing About Rob Ford

It looks like the big, incompetent, obnoxious hypocrite is toast. I've got a swarm of fruit-flies in my kitchen from a week's worth of dirty dishes.

So, I'm busy.

So here's another video (or two) ...

and ...

and ...

First Up-Close Glimpses of Neptune and Triton

This video is now about a moment in history:

harper the gutless

It's so obvious by now that he's a complete coward whenever it comes to accountability. It must be because he knows he's an utter fraud in everything.

Today I only ask if he's so cowardly that he'll resign before having to face the voters in the face of Mike Duffy's revelations of his serial lying to Parliament.

Belling the Cat

Once upon a time, there was a group of human malcontents. Very idealistic malcontents. They championed such things as social justice, human equality, environmental sustainability, individual freedom and world peace. But their lives were made miserable by THE SYSTEM. The System was controlled by powerful elites. Selfish people who valued profit and excess over social justice and the environment. Psychopathic authoritarians and militarists who promoted wars and oppression.

Sadly for the idealistic malcontents, The System was an effective propaganda exercise and millions of ordinary humans had bought into it. The idealistic malcontents would try to raise their voices above tiny squeaks but they were drowned out by the constant barrage of misinformation, lies called "traditions" and the deluge of daily elite nonsense. Whenever the malcontents tried to face off against the elites in the streets they usually got their asses kicked and their values distorted or mocked.

"Oh how wonderful it will be when the system finally topples!" the idealistic malcontents would say in their burrows. "We'll abolish profit. We'll abolish capitalism! We'll abolish war! We'll have human equality! No more cars! A world of humanistic science and ecological sanity! A world of healthy human relationships instead of competition and oppression! No more patriarchy! No more sexual oppression! Total artistic freedom! Genuine democracy!"

They spoke so long and at length about how wonderful it would be that they began to get excited about the possibilities. They went on and on until they started to sound as if these achievements had already been made. Then, one of them remembered where they were and said:

"How are we going to even begin to realize any of this?"

At that point, the whole burrow went silent and the idealistic malcontents began to drift away to their everyday lives alone or in small groups.

The Ungovernable

Yesterday, I posted another picture of this same banner:

Today, I just thought about what it means. What do these people do day-to-day? How truly "ungovernable" are they? Do they ever access public services? Do they ever obey laws?

I'm bitter. I'm a bitter broken man. Lately, my ire is directed at these radical blabbermouths; going on and on about how awesome they are, while remaining nothing but a tiny group of irrelevant people.

Anarchist Fantasies

I once knew an anarchist. Nice guy. Very intense. He started an anarchist discussion circle. He was really stoked about how these high school kids were getting radicalized by walking the picket-line with their teachers.

There was him (mid-twenties), me (late-twenties), a 19-year old dude, an 18-year old dudette, and about three teeny-boppers. The first meeting was just a discussion on principles, dominated by him. The second meeting, a week later was about possible "actions" we could do. The third meeting, there was just me and him. Embarrassed, he mumbled something about how losing the dead weight made us stronger, or something like that.

At times, support for the fucking harpercons stands at near 40% of the adult population in Canada. But somehow, the Great Awakening is just around the corner. Um, ... no it isn't. The country isn't even close to the anarchist mindset. Any initiatives we have will have to work within the dominant paradigm. Which is not to say that we mustn't work to change that paradigm. But gradualism is an unavoidable reality. (Or, if "gradualism' isn't the right work, simply wishing away present conditions isn't going to work.)

African Immigrants

So, in my line of work, I've ended up working with co-workers who are African immigrants. This is really a new one on me. In retrospect, it's not all that amazing. I've heard of Somali refugees, and Eritreans, ... and there've been a couple of cabbies from the Sudan come to think of it.

But in my working experience, immigrant co-workers have been mainly Eastern European, South Asian, and Vietnamese, truth be told.

One dude was from the Congo. He grew up in Brussels, Belgium though, lived in Paris, London, New York City, and settled finally in Toronto. (For some strange reason, he'd lived in Toronto, moved to NYC, and then came back to Toronto.) I was thrown for a bit of a loop. I mentioned that I knew about Mobutu and Kabila. Later, it occurred to me, a dude I'd written an essay on, Patrice Lumumba. I asked him (since I've discovered that some people revered as heroes by the Left, aren't as esteemed by their countrymen) if he was still a hero. He said, yes, Patrice Lumumba is still very much a hero to the Congolese. (He'd stated earlier how Lumumba was killed by the CIA and the Belgians.)

The other dude was from Zimbabwe. He ran afoul of Mugabe 13 years ago, lived in South Africa for a short while, before choosing Canada. On that plane trip 13 years ago, he stopped at Heathrow airport. He left behind two boys, then aged 6 months and two years old. He hasn't held them in his arms since.

Jim Flaherty on First Nations Protests

Canada's incompetent finance minister, the gnomish Jim Flaherty, warned that a nation-wide campaign of blockades would negatively impact his delusions about Canada's economic growth. (The story is at "Stun New" who I won't give links to.) Flaherty also warned the First Nations themselves that there aren't different legal regimes in Canada. There's one set of laws and if the First Nations break them, they'll be in BIG trouble.

His words would have a lot more weight if his own government wasn't a serial violator of the law. But even if harper wasn't a criminal on many levels, on Native land, retained by them through solemn treaties with the Crown/Us, there ARE different legal regimes. So shut the fuck up you ignorant dweeb.

Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere

 
This is a book that I just finished. Paul Mason's Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The new global revolutions. It was written in the supposedly heady days of 2011, when the "Arab Spring" and "Occupy Wall Street" and the anti-Austerity riots were raging across Europe. Apparently it's based on observations that became his blog. (Or something.)

I find it an excellent, but frustrating book. Excellent because it provides a great summary of the structural causes of the present economic crisis. Frustrating because there's all this self-evidently crapola nonsense about how ordinary people forming these groovy, out-of-sight networks in order to pull together and demand massive, but undefined, changes, are shaking the elites to their core. (Now, of course, it's 2013 and Qaddafi's fall has brought disaster, Mubarak's military deposed the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood, Syria's dictator has fought the USA's Al Qaeda cat's paws to a standstill, Obama has crushed "Occupy" and continues to bamboozle US-American progressives, and Canadians are swooning over pretty-boy Justin Trudeau.)

I, of course, know what the answer to the failures of democratic capitalism is, but nobody listens to me.

It's a good book. I'd recommend reading it. I thought that I'd be able to write a better review but I honestly don't give a fuck about much anymore.

Treaty Rights vs Court Injunctions

So the corporate polluting scum got a court injunction to force the Mi’kmaq FN to stop their protest. But the Mi’kmaq's Treaty Rights should have made any such injunction null and void to begin with.

The RCMP should be disbanded.

harper the Gutless Coward

It's one of the sickening puke's most revealing traits; his cowardice. Proroguing Parliament, squeezing out a tepid throne speech, leaving the country the very next day to continue hiding from the Senate scandal, and then ordering a military assault on the First Nations as well.

What a disgusting excuse for a human being.

What Can Be Done About RCMP Attacking First Nations?

What can be done, by us, against the RCMP's hyper-militaristic bullshit against unarmed First Nations protesters? The Elsipogtog people were trying to stop the land destroying obscenity of "fracking" from poisoning their water and fouling their air. If this ecocidal behaviour isn't stopped dead in its tracks, we're all fucked.

The rancid coward, stephen harper, fucked off to Belgium, the day after his snivelling throne speech, partly due to his desire to avoid accountability for his fraudster (and thuggish) Senate picks, but also, no doubt, so that he could hide from the fall-out of this raid.

Corporate destroyers and their legal injunctions are meaningless. The abusive, sexist, corrupt, racist, murderous, lazy and stupid RCMP can just shut-the-fuck-up about defending public safety and the rule of law.

But what are we going to do about it?

What are we going to do to help the Elsipogtog people?

Down is Up

 Lotta talk and writing about harper's throne speech yesterday. A prime minister who holds Parliament in contempt, and we're talking about his latest effort to re-brand his party of corporate fraudsters, torturers, rapists and closet-cases, as if he's a genuine democratic politician. The helmet-headed scum-bag got his majority through fraud, and instead of tossing him in the slammer we talk about his bullshit throne speech.

Well fuck that. harper is degenerate scum and he always will be. he's garbage to me.

Then we have those pathetic fraudsters, Georgio Mammolitti (or whatever the fuck his name is), the Toronto City Councilor/kept man. The sneering puss-ball has a nice, below market-value bungalow, where he preens and primps himself for whatever developer sugar-daddy is paying his way. This guy was the sort of self-entitled asshole who makes for a hard-driving union representative. Now that he's switched to the other side, that same sense of entitlement allows him to grandstand on bullshit like some city worker asleep on the job. The last Toronto worker found napping (a TTC ticket-collector) turned out to have been a genuine hero who was on heart medication and who died months after his public humiliation.

Look, sometimes union people sleep on the job. Sometimes minimum wage workers sleep on the job. Sometimes executives pad their expense accounts and violate labour and environmental laws, kill people and have their corporations declare bankruptcy to avoid any consequences for their larceny and fraud.

A corrupt, anti-democratic piece-of-shit like Mammoliti has no right to be calling out anyone with regards to their work ethic.

Speaking of pieces-of-shit who have no right to criticize anyone, Rod ("Mayor Stupid") Ford piped-up on the topic of sleeping workers. This stupid, useless turd works half a day (between his late-morning hangover and his late-afternoon shakes), doesn't have a clue about the basics of his job, and yet people record his crack-induced ramblings about his workforce? He refuses to divulge his itinerary, even though he's paid on the taxpayer's dime, and he has the fucking gall to talk about accountability???

We live in a topsey-turvey world people. Where up is down and down is up. That these disgusting clowns get even a semi-serious hearing, is a travesty beyond description.

Ah, fuck it ...

Here's a video ...

... ah yasss!

Chicken-Hawk Scum-Bags

A good survey of the harpercon's dismal record of hypocrisy and deceit. I can't believe that we didn't force these ugly fuckers from power years ago. Canadian apathy.

This Oughta Mean Something ...

International cover-up of genotoxic environmental catastrophe? I'm one of those limp-wristed "pwogwessive" types whooz against things like the death penalty. But maybe an uprising, followed by executions of those who launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003 would teach these scumbags some fucking lessons?

Do you think rumsfeld, Condi, Cheney or bush II would die as well as Saddam Hussein? No fucking way. Of all of them, I think Condi would die the proudest. She was, I think, the most deluded. Cheney would have had a pathetic heart attack long before the sentence was carried out. rumsfeld would convince himself that it wasn't happening until the last few seconds, and bush II would be weeping and shitting himself, a goddamned disgusting spectacle.

"A war president. With war on my mind."

Hanging wouldn't be too good for the stupid dry-drunk.

Economic Incompetence

What we're seeing in the USA's political-economic policy isn't so much "policy" based on flawed theories, as it is naked, short-sighted greed, being justified with a fig-leaf of delusion. They want more and more money. They don't want to share it. They want to "invest" it in an unregulated, totally subsidized gambling casino, where it can either be lost in a swamp of corruption and fraud, or (preferably in the eyes of the greed-heads) it can continue to accumulate (forever) while remaining hermetically sealed from the real economy and the "greedy" hands of the majority who need to pay the rent and save for education and retirement and health insurance.

They delude themselves that they're job and wealth creators, but nobody believes that anymore. The plain evidence shows that they are wealth and job destroyers.

Here in Canada, we stagnate along, as our shriveled gnome of a finance minister practices his own style of austerity and incompetence, luxuriating in the stability brought by the more restrained neo-liberalism of his Liberal predecessors. ("Conservatives" have always been the idiot cousins in the neo-liberal family. Their wild-eyed fantasies are the only permissible deviations from neo-liberal gospel. If their delusions produce disasters now and again (think their puppet-masters), one has to admire their exuberance. Besides, their excesses helpfully make the "liberal" version of neo-liberal austerity and greed look sensible.)

Of course, the USA (and Europe, and China, and India) are looming for disaster. When those big economies go down, little Canada will get sucked-down along with it. The past thirty years have been a steady downward course. Austerity, stagnation and decline. It's required literally tens of trillions of dollars to prop-up the world capitalist economy. It's time to call complete bullshit on these morons and greed-heads. Complete bullshit.

The World Is Made for Edward Burkhardt

Remember the CEO of Rail World Inc., and owner of the MMA trains that derailed in Lac-Megantic, killing 42 people? He pushed deregulation, fought unions, pursued profit over safety, and when the inevitable happened, blamed everyone but himself and had MMA declare bankruptcy so as to escape paying for his own disaster.

This is the naked face of capitalism. This sort of shriveled soul is the hero in an Ayn Rand novel. (That horrible writer's main character pretended to run a railroad herself!) This is how capitalism avoids being as bad as Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Burkhardt wasn't setting out to deliberately kill anyone. He just wanted to make a buck. So, when people die (as was inevitable) he can delude himself into saying that it was just one of those crazy things.

In short, he's a child in a man's body. And we give these imbeciles free rein of their selfish ambition because we've elevated their materialistic values to our highest values. It's a world of clods. Made by clods for other murderous clods.

ain't nobody gonna save Canuck democracy!

Murray Dobbin gives us a terrifying overview of the 31-year "trade" deal with China, in an essay entitled "Who Will Save Canadian Democracy?" I'll skip ahead to the answer:

Who will save us from this repugnant, anti-democratic initiative? Probably no one. The only player to come to the plate has been the tiny Hupacasath First Nation of BC which challenged FIPA in federal court. Unfortunately the judge not only found for the government, he assessed costs to the band of over $100,000.  They are appealing (donate here – deadline Sept 30)   the case. But ultimately it is the provinces which hold the real power to save democracy.

What are they waiting for?

Here's the thing; Murray Dobbin was one of the people I contacted about my initiative to build a nation-wide protest movement to force the harper government to resign. He told me he was too busy to read it.

So, let's review: Dobbin looks over the imperiled state of democracy in Canada and sees no likely candidates for its saviour. He gets a message from a stranger asking if he'd like to have a look at a way to challenge harper and, while there's nothing else he's aware of happening at the moment, tells the stranger that he's too busy.

It's pathological. "Workers as Citizens" is the most realistic and all-encompassing strategy there is for the democratic destruction of corporate power, and left-wing academics simply stared at me when I presented it to them. Left-wing activists respond with non-sequitors about how co-ops are groovy. Working within the formal political process makes people into deluded chumps. It's much better to chant at a rally for an afternoon or write criticisms of capitalism in left-wing media.

It's why we fail people. And something makes me think the problem is structural. It's not going to happen, NOT because people's brains are incapable of grasping it. It's because something in the zietgeist isn't happening and there's a switch turned-off somewhere.

A Thought Experiment

Think about the disaster of Afghanistan. We've been there for over ten years. We've spent billions.

Why?

To defeat an insurgency that remains as strong as ever.

To defend a government that is as corrupt and unpopular as ever.

To defend a program of school-building that is marred by theft and fraud.

Rosie DiMoron says that this multi-billion dollar project was vindicated by the fact that the Canadian Forces learned to fight again, but I rather think some well planned war games could have done that for maybe tens of millions, rather than ten billion dollars.

Imagine a peaceful program of domestic spending of $15 billion that had such poor results. The fur that would have flown from the militarists and neo-liberals. But wasting it on a fucking war, and these scum don't even bat an eye-lid.

They have no legitimacy.

I Got's Woik 2 Do

Argh.

I Don't Care About the US Government Shut-Down

I really don't care about the Republican Congress shutting down the US Government until Democrats agree to reform the Affordable Care Act. (or "Obamacare"). Because "Obamacare" is a Repug-inspired, shitty piece of legislation that forces people to buy something they don't want (and was upheld as constitutional by a Supreme Court that privileges corporate power over individual rights) and because the Repugs are a repugnant group of assholes who just want to preserve the "free-market" hellish nightmare of uncontrollable corporate fraud that was the status-quo.

Both sides are anti-democratic, inhuman monsters. This struggle between them is therefore irrelevant, so far the purported issues involved. The real-world economic impact of the shut-down is not irrelevant, but I don't know where I stand on that either. The economy is already doing shitty. Perhaps a self-inflicted catastrophe will shake up US-American society and produce a democratic backlash?

Dean Del Mastro Goes To Prison

I'd like to see that rancid, corrupt, election finance law violating, robo-Con deception scum-bag go to prison. I'd like to see his fat stupid face distorted by bawling and tears. I'd like the incarceration of this harpercon scumbag to be the biggest nail in turd-boy stephen harper's desperate attempts to dispel the stench of his party of fraudsters, morons and his appointed incompetents, wife-beaters and chiseling dead-beats.

Stress

So here's a video: