Sunday, January 30, 2022

Scumbags Trudeau and Freeland's Pro-Fascist Foreign Policy

 

Via Jacobin, the excellent Yves Engler lays out the failure of Justin Trudeau's and Crystia Freeland's pro-fascist foreign policy in Latin America:

Justin Trudeau’s Latin American strategy is in tatters.

From the beginning of his time in office, Trudeau has launched attacks on what remains of the left-wing governments that came to power in Latin America over the course of the past two decades. His party has supported the overthrow of leftist governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. But socialists remain in power in Venezuela, and leftists in the region have won a series of national elections. Progressive forces have defeated right-wing politicians in Honduras, Peru, Bolivia, and elsewhere. The push for regional integration is being rekindled.

Read the whole thing.  But I want to emphasize the parts where Engler describes Trudeau and Freeland actively supporting and praising fascist scumbags:

Meanwhile, Ottawa actively backed the ouster of Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president, providing significant support for the OAS’s effort to discredit Evo Morales’s 2019 election. This in turn fueled opposition protests that served as justification for the coup. Protests by social movements would, however, force the coup government to hold another election, handing Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo a second win. This turn of events greatly discredited the OAS and other coup supporters.

...

As an alliance of wealthy white supremacists, Christian extremists, and North American interlopers overplayed its hand in Bolivia, Trudeau’s anti-socialist ally in Chile was weakened by a popular uprising. Two weeks into the October 2019 demonstrations against Sebastián Piñera’s government, Trudeau held a phone conversation with the remarkably unpopular president, who had just sent the Chilean Army into the streets. At the time of the call, nineteen people had already died — and dozens more were seriously injured — in protests that began against a hike in transit fares and morphed into a broader challenge to economic inequality.

According to a published report of the conversation between the two premiers, Trudeau criticized “election irregularities in Bolivia” — used to justify removing Morales — and discussed the campaign to remove Venezuela’s president. A Canadian Press story noted that “a summary from the Prime Minister’s Office of Trudeau’s phone call with Piñera made no direct mention of the ongoing turmoil in Chile, a thriving country with which Canada has negotiated a free trade agreement.”

...

Inspired by their Chilean counterparts, protesters put far-right Colombian president Iván Duque on the back foot in late 2019. After Duque won a close election, then minister of foreign affairs Chrystia Freeland congratulated him and said, “Canada and Colombia share a commitment to democracy and human rights.”

In August 2018, Trudeau tweeted, “Today, Colombia’s new President, Ivan Duque, took office and joins Swedish PM, Norway PM, Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sánchez, and others with a gender-equal cabinet. Iván, I look forward to working with you and your entire team.”

A month later he added, “Thanks to President Ivan Duque for a great first meeting at UNGA this afternoon, focused on growing our economies, addressing the crisis in Venezuela, and strengthening the friendship between Canada & Colombia.”

...

While they made dozens of statements criticizing irregularities in Venezuela, the Trudeau government remained silent about the equally murky impeachment of Rousseff, and was unfazed by the persecution of the Left more broadly.

Canada began negotiations to join the Brazilian-led MERCOSUR trade bloc (just after Venezuela was expelled). They also held the Canada-Brazil Strategic Dialogue Partnership. In October 2018, Freeland met her Brazilian counterpart to discuss, among other issues, pressuring the Venezuelan government. She tweeted, “Canada and Brazil enjoy a strong friendship and we are thankful for your support in defending the international rules-based order and holding the Maduro regime in Venezuela to account.” Under Bolsonaro, Brazil would join the Lima Group.

In 2018, the openly sexist, racist, and stridently anti-environmentalist Bolsonaro won the presidential election — largely because the front-runner in the polls was in jail. Former Workers’ Party president Lula da Silva, who ended his second term with an 83 percent approval rating, was blocked from running due to politically motivated corruption charges.

The Trudeau government was publicly silent on Lula’s imprisonment. The night before the Supreme Court was set to determine Lula’s fate, the general in charge of the army hinted at military intervention if the judges ruled in favor of the popular former president. Not even this development was criticized by Ottawa. The courts have since annulled the convictions against Lula and polls suggest he will trounce Bolsonaro in the presidential vote scheduled for October.

After backing numerous failed and dubious contenders, it still remains unlikely that Trudeau’s Liberals will change their Latin American geopolitical strategy. Canada’s policy in the region has long been shaped by Washington and the economic interests of Canadian capitalists. It suits Canada’s banks, mining companies, and other corporations to crush efforts that seek economic and political independence from US empire. 

Any simpleton, self-described "progressive" who swoons over these two assholes is a fraud.



Saturday, January 29, 2022

The Anti-Vaxx Trucker Convoy and "Fake News"

 

Canadian Cynic has been doing a great job of chronicling the tale of the convoy of right-wingers who are ostensibly protesting mandatory vaccine mandates for Canadian truck drivers re-entering the country from the USA.  I say "ostensibly" because nobody that I know of has explained how they can be so upset since they need to be vaccinated to enter the USA in the first place.  Another reason why I'm using the word "ostensibly" is because, as this editorial from Policy Options points out, besides containing long-time anti-vaxxers of the Hippie persuasion, and individuals who have suffered genuine economic costs from our governments' mishandling of lockdowns, the majority of people in this protest movement are the same right-wing, racist, authoritarian, nutbars who constituted the Canadian "Yellow-Vest" movement and all of the other moronic, hypocritical, whining cry-baby political cults in Canada for decades.

The anti-lockdown/anti-vaccine movements have had nearly two years in which to network, reach new audiences and test their messages to improve their outreach. These well-networked individuals may continue to stay in touch with extremists as they move to new issues – whatever those may be.

These new grievances will likely be along the lines of previous far-right extremist preoccupations, such as the promotion of anti-immigration, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views, policies and violence. They may also manifest through a youth-driven culture war that seeks to “take Canada back” from what is seen as a coalition of socialists, progressives and globalists. Conspiracy movement adherents, such as those in the QAnon movement, may seek to tie their beliefs to anti-government extremism, posing a serious threat to public order.

In his latest post Cynic discusses the grossly inflated numbers of convoy participants provided by its cheerleaders (as opposed to the much smaller numbers that have been verified) and reflects upon how these shameless hypocrites have been shrieking about "Fake News" for years and years.  I once attempted to discuss the appearance of the term "Fake News" here at the Schoolyard:

Right now I think it needs to be said that the first time I really noticed the term "fake news" was when Donald Trump kept using it to condemn any and all negative coverage of himself and his presidential campaign. Of course the concept behind "fake news" has always been around. We called it "propaganda," or "lies" or "bullshit" or "deceit," or any number of terms. Perhaps even "fake news" once in a while. FOX News was a notorious source of false facts, sins of omission, slanted editorials and other crimes against truth.

...

But, again, the real popularization of the specific term "fake news" appears to have come from Trump. And this is interesting, because Donald Trump is a shameless con-artist. He's a liar. A fraud. He's a flim-flam man.

...

The reflexive defense mechanism of a liar/con-artist is to deflect attention away from their own lies and to go on the offensive against their accusers.

...

So, Trump has to call critical coverage of his failings as "fake news" or, IOW "lies" as a means of self-defense, since he's a total fraud. To do this he resorts to the whole idea of a corrupt "liberal" media that right-wing hypocrites and morons so love to wail about.

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for Trump) his target (the "liberal media") is an easy one. Here are some complaints we on the Left share with many Trump supporters:

1. The media lies. (see: "Iraq", "Russiagate", protest movements)

2. The media is slanted.

3. The media is elitist.

4. The media serves the powerful.

Obviously the denizens of Trumpland and "Ford Nation" and "InfoWars" and Ezra Levant's "Bigotry Cruises" have their own spin on what they consider to be lies. These are such people as to notice that a sympathetic portrait of a Black person, or a First Nations person in the news is not 100% indifferent (and therefore "neutral") and choose to rail against that. But they share with us a disdain for the media's craven worship of "free trade." (At least we used to condemn corporate free trade deals. Alas, Trump Derangement Syndrome has got many leftists defending NAFTA.)

Basically the corporate media espouses the neo-liberal corporate agenda. It's inevitable. It's what they do. It's in their DNA. The problem for them is that the corporate neo-liberal agenda has fucked so many ordinary people over that left-wing and right-wing are turning against it in its entirety. "The center cannot hold." The elites cannot paper-over the shitty outcomes enough to hide the stench.

So, the issue isn't "deceitful right-wingers hypocritically claim that corporate news is biased against them."  Corporate news is biased.  It is blatant propaganda.  But we have to place corporate news in its proper place in our political-economic cultural environment.  The corporate or mainstream media is a creature of capitalism.  It is owned by capitalists and funded by capitalists.  In a country like Canada an institution like the CBC functions within a capitalist eco-system and is funded by politicians who mainly serve capitalism and is administered by bureaucrats who have endeared themselves to these mainly pro-capitalist politicians.  

How does the media relate to the right-wing?  Well, we all know how the vast majority of Canada's newspapers infamously endorsed the stephen harper Conservative Party of Canada after said party's serial abuses of all aspects of our parliamentary pseudo-democracy.  So they're right-wing. And major television network news (Global TV and CTV) are ridiculously right-wing. But they're corporate right-wing. And, culturally, they're also mostly liberal on social issues.  (Social issues are one way that capitalist elites can give some ground.  For instance, there might be a lot of structural reasons behind the higher levels of poverty among Blacks in the USA, and there might be reasons why US capitalism would like there to be a distinct minority that can be the first to be shed during economic downturns (thus sparing the majority and avoiding a larger political backlash); but to the extent that a talented Black person could make them money, to that extent will US capitalism reject racism and embrace diversity.  Capitalism is a political-economic system.  It isn't inherently race-based, or religious, or heterosexual.  Capitalism isn't even sex-based.  Patriarchy is a separate system.  An actually larger one in which (or besides which) capitalism operates.  So while men might organize to keep women down, capitalism itself doesn't care about female CEO's or female Presidents of the United States, so long as they are committed to promoting profit over everything else and serving the capitalist system as a whole.

Whether or not the mainstream media reports something accurately or not depends upon how much accurate reporting impacts capitalism either negatively or positively.  (And these cost-benefit analyses are always done based on short-term thinking.  Capitalism has been destroying itself for decades now.  Like a parasite killing its host.)

I have to buy groceries, wash dishes, do laundry, do push-ups, and work on my cartoons.  I'm going to try to wrap this up quickly.

So, who is organizing this convoy? They are primarily far-right Canadians of mostly less-than oligarch status.  They are racist conspiracy theorists.  They are morons who believe in a moronic conceptualization of "individual freedom."  The are arrogant narcissists.  They are proudly ignorant.  They are a lunatic fringe of the general population.  They are the sort of people who can (for example) blame all the violence of the Trump orchestrated January 6th, 2021 Washinton D.C. riots on Antifa one second while praising the event and the rioters to the skies the next second without skipping a beat or feeling even a twinge of embarrassment.

But notice that they've received individual donations, some as large as $25,000.  Who has $25,000 to throw at something so stupid and useless?  Rich people.  Capitalists.  To the extent that any capitalist has problems with the lockdowns, or [especially in the case of the oil industry] with the imposition of any regulations on their doing business, or with the tepid, reality-based policies of the Liberal Party of Canada (as opposed with the Conservative's willingness to ignore all reality if it serves capital), to that extent will the corporate media cover the convoy properly.  But to the extent that the convoy participants reject free trade, or the exploitation of minorities who can be paid less than white people, or any other ideas they have that offends capitalism, to that extent will they be derided or at least ignored.  And ponder this:  The extent that anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers contribute to the prolongation of the pandemic and to the demonization of the pharmaceutical industry, is a big factor in how those capitalists who acknowledge reality about the pandemic and who are aware that it is in their interests for it to stop, will ally with the pharmaceutical industry in opposing these stupid yahoos.

I'm not going to say that I agree with everything "progressives" have to say about all of these issues.  But I'm tired of typing this post so I shall end it here.



Tuesday, January 25, 2022

A Couple of Good Essays About the Fabricated Ukraine "Crisis"

Bugsky Gard National Park - The Ukraine

 Gary Leupp's "Isn't It Obvious?"

No context. No knowledge. No insight. Just more traditional tribalism, with the most sophisticated people expressing the most naked, often racist, arrogance whenever they talk about the big world in which we live. Thus after the U.S. spends five billion dollars to interfere in the Ukrainian political process to topple a democratically elected president who rejects NATO membership and place a neonazi-backed puppet in power, that post-coup regime becomes the one that REALLY represents Ukraine. Ukraine calling on us to help it versus (more) Russian aggression!

Isn’t it obvious?

...

One has the feeling this “crisis” in Ukraine (based entirely by media reports that Russia is about to invade, which the Russians have for their part dismissed, not that it matters) is a test of “U.S. leadership” (which is to say, ability to arm-twist Germany in particular and get everybody on board risking war with Russia). Biden wants to look strong. His supporters want him to look strong. CNN and MSNBC join Fox in criticizing Biden’s apparent suggestion that the U.S. could tolerate a small incursion but not full-scale invasion. How quickly did the White House respond with a correction!

And Caitlin Johnstone has two recent articles.  This one about a bullshit UK/USA "intelligence" report:

Now if you are hoping to be provided with some sort of evidence for these incendiary claims, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you, because get this: the journalists reporting on this story have not seen any evidence. Apparently they’re just passing on unverified government assertions made by unknown spies to their readers because they were told to, which I guess is something journalists can do now?

I know, I know, I was a little surprised when I learned that too. But here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The British communiqué provided no evidence to back up its assertion that Russia was plotting to overthrow the Ukrainian government,” the Times reports.

You will be reassured however to learn that despite the actual evidence of the actual Russian nefariousness being kept invisible to us, anonymous officials within the US government have reviewed the intelligence gathered by anonymous British spies for us and concluded on our behalf that the evidence is solid.

“In Washington, officials said they believe the British intelligence is correct. Two officials said it had been collected by British intelligence services,” The New York Times informs us.

You see that? These claims about a devious Russian conspiracy have been confirmed by anonymous government operatives in both the US and the UK. That’s two separate, completely unconnected governments independently verifying that these claims are true. That’s called independent corroboration, gentlesirs. Basically the same as ironclad proof.

And this one about lunatic pundits trying to prepare the public's mind for nuclear war.

This massive claim should be treated very seriously. It should be treated seriously not because it’s well-founded (Moon of Alabama explains that Moscow has no good reason to launch an unprovoked attack on Ukraine and war is entirely avoidable, and Kiev is telling the public to stop worrying about a Russian invasion), but because there’s no way for this claim not to be a big deal.

Think about it. If Vindman’s claims are true then we should all be running around like our hair is on fire demanding our governments move heaven and earth to prevent this horror from being unleashed upon our world. If his claims are not true then a US news network just aired brazen disinformation about a matter of unparalleled importance, and ironically did so right after the US State Department published a lengthy report on the dangers of Russian disinformation on RT and Sputnik (which was in turn ironic because, as The Dissident explains, the report is itself packed full of disinfo).

That's the thing: Nuclear war is a serious thing.  We should get rid of these weapons.  Especially since, in the hands of the rotten political culture that spewed out something as ridiculously repulsive as Joe Biden, we could all be killed over a hypocrisy-filled, imperialist sham-crisis.  And that is all on top of the crises of the pandemic, global heating and capitalist humanity's murdering of the eco-system.



Saturday, January 22, 2022

The Absolutely Stupid, Complete Waste of Time, Fabricated Ukraine "Crisis"

 


I had this to say about this nonsense about a week ago:

I'll just leave off by saying it is nauseating that in this era of REAL world crises (especially COVID and Global Warming) that Biden (or whatever is pulling his strings) sees fit to waste our time with this bullshit.  That he's able to posture like this despite his supporting the holocausts in Yemen, and Iraq, as well as the crimes against democracy across the US empire.  And the fact that there are millions of idiots who are stupid enough to take all this garbage seriously.

And I get increasingly disgusted with it everytime Biden or Blinken continue to babble on about it.  We, the human species, dominated by the anti-human political-economy of capitalism, have very real problems to deal with.  Global Heating and a worldwide viral pandemic and mass extinctions of other lifeforms (caused by us) to name only a few.  And yet, to the extent that his age-deteriorated brain (never a top-of-the-line model to begin with) is capable, Joseph Robinette Biden genuinely expects us to care about his totally manufactured Ukrainian crisis.

Yes. It's a complete fabrication.  I've said it over and over again at this blog: Vladimir Putin does not want war with the USA or anyone else because his country cannot afford a war.  Not because Putin is an angel.  Putin is not a saint.  He is not a puppy dog.  He is not a great statesman.  He is a guy who has stayed at the top of the Russian state longer than anyone else since the fall of the USSR and he probably wants his country to succeed because it would make him look good.  Ordinary Russians see him as infinitely preferable to the sort of person who would be acceptable to the maniacs in Washington, given their experience with Washington's former puppet Boris Yeltsin.

Russia clearly wanted to join the US-led "international community."  Unfortunately for them, Washington has always hated continued Russian claims of independence.  More importantly, the USA's military-industrial complex needs enemies to "justify" its grotesque theft of US taxpayers' dollars and maintain its profit levels.  These two issues are the reasons behind Biden and Blinken's phony concerns for the people of the Ukraine. Russia doesn't want war and it doesn't want to conquer the Ukraine because it can't afford to do either.

[O]f course, we absolutely do not need to fight for Ukraine to the last Ukrainian, we certainly do not want to fight there. All this squealing about the fact that we are going to capture Kiev, it is about nothing. Yes, our military is standing at the Ukrainian border, but only so that on the other side it does not occur to anyone to break into the Donbass. And the capture of Ukraine in our military plans, I'm sure, is not included. If only for the reason that capturing a country that is castrated economically, morally and intellectually, a country with a destroyed infrastructure and an embittered population is the worst-case scenario. The worst thing America can do for us is to give us Ukraine in the form they brought it to.


It's non-stop with the New Cold War against Russia (which has a GDP smaller than Canada's).  Putin destroyed the USA's non-existent democracy by stealing the 2016 election from Saint Hillary Clinton and giving it to his puppet Trump.  (False. False.)  Putin paid bouties to the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. (False.)

And what's worse than a fabricated, bullshit international crisis?  One that's built on a mountain of hideous hypocrisy.  Why the fuck are we supposed to think that Biden, or Trudeau, or anyone else pushing this crapola cares about the people of the Ukraine?  Trudeau doesn't care about Canada's First Nations. He doesn't care about the Palestinians.  He doesn't care about Yemenis.  He's still selling weapons to the monarchical dictatorship misogynist genocidal government of Saudi Arabia.  Biden and Blinken hate Black people. They hate Palestinians. Biden has the blood and trauma of millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, and others on his hands.  Biden has bragged about his involvement in the policies of several Latin American countries even though all those policies produced has been atrocities.  (It's possible that Biden is too stupid, arrogant, ignorant and delusional to grasp this reality, but even if that were true, who thinks he would give a shit were someone to strap him down, gag his stupid mouth, and force-feed him the truth?)

At fifty-five years of life, and a few decades of following the news, I've come to the conclusion that one must never, never, never ever listen to our elites when they're crying over some horrible tragedy in some foreign country.  The only time they ever do this is when they want to crush and official enemy just for being an official enemy.  Give the scumbags in Washington, London, Brussells, Ottawa any respect for their lies just leads to the Vietnam War, the destruction of human rights in Latin America, horror and bloodshed in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.  

Are Russia and China governed by saints? Of course not.  But being foreign governments you have zero ability to impact their decision-making processes.  If you want to criticize their more egregious crimes, feel free to do so.  But NEVER get behind the assholes leading our governments and their hypocritical campaigns against them.  Because then you're just being a stupid patsy.  You should spend more time going after your own governments.  You should spend more time telling them to STFU about Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Iran, etc., ... and to stop with the murderous sanctions and the support for death squads and the land-theft and apartheid in Palestine and the depredations of Canadian mining companies in the LDC's. Look! Our rulers don't even care about us? Why would you think they care about other ordinary people thousands of miles away?

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Trudeau on Left-Wing Cynicism

 Apparently our shit-head prime minister Justin Trudeau is distressed by the "casual cynicism of the left."  We affect him more than the far-right crazies who want to hang him for "treason."


"Cynicism" the moron says.  He probably doesn't understand the meaning of the word.  Justin me boy!  Did you think you could brazenly break your promise to end our antiquated and anti-democratic First-Past-The-Post electoral system and not make people cynical?  Did you think forming the LIMA Group with fascists like Brazil's Bolsonaro, the Death Squadders in Colombia and the Honduran Mafioso to target the people of Venezuela with deadly sanctions over the alleged human rights abuses of their government wouldn't endgender cynicism? Did you really believe that it wouldn't make people cynical to pull billions of dollars out of thin-air to bail-out an oil pipeline project?  Did you think that signing the UN Declaration on the Rights on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and while not accepting the obligations that entailed wouldn't make people cynical?  (On top of your continued serial abuses of the First Nations?)

I can't imagine the intellectual and moral debasement of those who practically swoon over this stupid asshole Justin Trudeau.  I do know that normal people regard both the man and his fans with contempt.

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Nature Trying to Get Rid of Us?

 

Sometimes you read about natural systems, like fungi, or whatever, ... feedback loops, ... nature keeping things balanced.  Too many herbivores leads to starvation, so predators keep their numbers low.  A delicate balance that has been thrown-off by humans.  Maybe the virus is stage-1 of the Earth trying to get rid of us.  It's not a conscious thing.  But it's genius nonetheless.  

One the one hand, we are the most "intelligent" lifeform that we know of in the entire universe.  I don't think dolphins are aware of the vastness that is the universe.  And if we get snuffed, ... well the universe will continue to wind its meaningless way without us.  And animal consciousness will thereafter be limited to seeking food on limited grazing/hunting ranges on this planet.  And it won't matter because we're a stinking, ugly, stupid, boorish, arrogant, moronic species.

Friday, January 14, 2022

The Snivelling Hypocrisy of Justin Trudeau

 


Justin Trudeau, our air-head pretty-boy prime minister, has decided to continue Canada's almost century-long tradition of toadying to the USA's insane, imperialist and morally bullshit foreign policy.  Remember: Justin Trudeau is the sort of piece of shit who decided to use Canada's very first National Day For Truth and Reconciliation to take a beach vacation!  As prime minister!  When it was also, just that year, that the First Nations obtained physical proof of what had been known for a long time; that there were mass graves of Aboriginal children buried under the grounds of many former Residential Schools. MASS. GRAVES.

Justin Trudeau then, is either a really, really, stupid air-head or he's a callous racist prick.

Anyhow, what I want to talk about today is Trudeau's brainless, morally bankrupt siding with the USA and NATO against Russia.  The Biden government hates Russia for the same reason the permanent Deep State/foreign policy hive-mind has always hated Russia (and China): Because Russia and China are countries with enough power to resist total US hegemony. That's it. 

I'm starting a new paragraph to emphasize something. Let's put aside for a moment whether China really wants to conquer Taiwan or whatever and let's put aside Putin supposedly wanting to invade the Ukraine.  What is US hegemony?  Is it a benevolent, "rules-based international order"? No. Because it is neither "benevolent" nor "rules-based."  The US-led hegemonic international order is a social order where individuals in the "core" countries (the USA, UK, Japan, France, and many others including Canada) are treated simultaneously as "consumers" and "workers."  As "consumers" we are as valuable as our disposable incomes.  And our disposable incomes (or more accurately, our credit limits) are there to be exploited for short-term benefit by the capitalist system.  We are to be compelled to spend as much as we can on things that we don't need.  If this requires going into unsustainable debt, so be it.  We will have put up assets as collatoral which can be seized.  And if we go bankrupt, ... well Joe Biden himself did what he could to remove bankruptcy protection from US-American households.  Including bankruptcy for debts incurred by having to pay for medical care through private health insurance.

Sigh. I always do this.  Start talking about a specific topic but end up talking in great deal about something only tangentially related.  But I truly believe that the evil of US-led capitalist imperialism is that it is part of a whole of something else.  For instance; I was going to eventually point-out that Justin Trudeau is imposing sanctions on Russia for a non-existent troop build-up on the Russia-Ukraine border while continuing to sell armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia while that country continues to conduct a genocidal air campaign and blockade against Yemen.  But the big question would remain: WHY do our leaders do these things?

And that brings me back to how we're treated as consumers to be fleeced on the one hand, and on the other hand, as workers, or "inputs" to production, which is to say "costs" to be "minimized."  If we could be replaced by machines we would be (and obviously are).  Until we can be replaced by machines we are treated like machines. Worked for as long as possible with the minimum of maintenance and upkeep until we breakdown.  It it is cheaper to replace us with a new machine then we are replaced.  And don't forget: This is all short-term thinking.  If an employer sees more short-term profit from replacing an experienced older worker with an inexperienced newer worker, they will do so, and simply push the newer worker to match the productivity of the experienced worker until they either fail utterly or stumble along at some acceptable rate of semi-success, learning along the way.  Regardless, the point is to continue to make the price all inputs, the costs of production as little as possible, while extracting the maximum of output and profit from them in the short-term.

The same thing goes for the material resources of the production process.  Raw materials are to be extracted as cheaply as possible, as much as is necessary, regardless of the ability of the planet to absorb this gouging.  And the waste products of production (from carbon emissions, to toxic chemicals, to mountains of debris) are to be sloughed off onto the eco-systems of the community (the "society" that the cretinous Margaret Thatcher said did not exist) with the minimum of compensation from the polluting capitalists.  Hence we have global warming; mountains and seas of plastic garbage; the toxic abandoned sites of the oil industry in Canada

So you might ask what this has to do with Russia and China. Especially since Russia is now capitalist and China (despite retaining a strong administrative state) is now fully integrated into the international capitalist economy. I'd say the primary reason is that the military-industrial complex is a huge part of the USA's political economy.  This is guaranteed, publicly financed, high-profits.  As well, this revenue stream helps to enforce the domination of international capitalist order.  For the USA, this meant the destruction of the autarchic German (and Naziism) and Japanese (primarily under the military) economic blocs. Did Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan want what was best for the countries they planned on incorporating into their orbits? Of course not. But that wasn't what was pissing the ...

You know what? Fuck it. I thought about venting. So I vented. But I'm not going to waste an entire morning constructing yet another world-historical essay putting the bullshit of Biden's manufactured "Ukraine Crisis" into its proper context and then trashing the clown Justin Trudeau's latest attempt to slurp shit out of some US president's asshole while trying to preen like a "statesman."  I could wipe the floor with an asshat like Terry Glavin, both intellectually and physically, but my viewpoints don't serve Western imperialism whereas Glavin's do. So Glavin makes a living from his writing and I don't.

I'll just leave off by saying it is nauseating that in this era of REAL world crises (especially COVID and Global Warming) that Biden (or whatever is pulling his strings) sees fit to waste our time with this bullshit.  That he's able to posture like this despite his supporting the holocausts in Yemen, and Iraq, as well as the crimes against democracy across the US empire.  And the fact that there are millions of idiots who are stupid enough to take all this garbage seriously.

Monday, January 10, 2022

COVID-19 Can't Read the Charter of Rights & Freedoms (and other thoughts)

 


Again: Start from the premise that the pandemic is real.  The contemptible shit-head that I raged about last post no doubt denied that COVID-19 existed, probably "evolved" to acknowledge it was real but downplayed it's dangers, probably didn't wear a mask or practice any sort of sensible social distancing, definitely didn't get vaccinated, definitely caught COVID-19 and definitely threw himself upon the mercy of Canada's public healthcare system, which saved his sorry ass whereupon he didn't learn a fucking goddamned thing and continued to babble stupidly and arrogantly about "freedom."

As the contemptible shit-head painfully learned: COVID-19 is a real and deadly virus.  It would have killed him.  That means that all the stories that he formerly denied were true.  It's real. It spreads from person to person.  The more people it spreads to the more people get sick. The longer the virus lasts. The more chances the virus has to mutate. The more sick people flood our emergency rooms. The longer this lasts the more chances of increasingly dangerous mutations and strains of this virus arising.

Jesus-fucking-Christ but I am so exhausted, mentally and physically, from being constantly enraged with these shit-heads.  These stupid, arrogant assholes riding public transit without a mask.  Babbling their vomit theories about how masks and vaccines violate their precious bodily sovereignty and their Charter rights.

The fucking virus can't read.  The virus isn't thinking about a Charter challenge. The virus's opinion on your bodily sovereignty is diametrically opposed to yours.  Now there's talk about a combination of a variant with Delta and Omicron aspects.  Contagious like Omicron and deadly like Delta.

Here's a reasonable sounding forecast of the consequences of pandering to shit-heads and capitalist vermin: "COVID Colonizes the Future":

The future does not look bright, regarding the health of the human species. What it looks like is, well, lots of people dying from covid, all the time, as the virus mutates, becomes endemic and slashes life expectancy in countries that have not controlled it.  ... So while covid is a disease for all people and animals, it remains a fatal one for the elderly, even if one variant, omicron, is milder. Reduced longevity looms, going forward. This is a permanent setback for the human race.

It didn’t have to be this way. As countries like China and New Zealand demonstrated, covid can be controlled. But for this you need a strong central government that cares about public health. Even better would have been a U.N. on steroids, a strong, central WORLD government, which, other than world capitalist rule, global political and military bigwigs are in no way ready for. And in any event, the window for humanity to contain this disease closed over a year ago. The death cult that is capitalism refused financial sacrifice for human well-being. 

As with global heating, so with COVID.  Only COVID worked fast enough that ... ah, who am I kidding.  Even if you denied COVID, refused to get vaccinated, caught COVID and almost died from it, ... some people can still be babbling like shit-heads about their "right" to go unmasked and unprotected.  We're doomed.

So, while I've been grinding my teeth in simmering rage over shit-head anti-vaxxers/COVID-deniers, I've been reading (skimming really) both mainstream and left-wing accounts of the disgusting, contemptible Biden administration's hypocritical nonsense about the Ukraine.  Ted Snider writes an excellent backgrounder for you all:

Six Things the Media Won’t Tell You About Ukraine - CounterPunch.org

The piece provides lots of evidence about the lies to not bring NATO closer to Russia's borders; that the EU-deal with the Ukraine would also have meant military and foreign-policy integration with the EU and NATO; the USA's close involvement with the coup in the Ukraine; all among other things.

And everytime someone tries to point out the FACT that Putin (being the leader of a weaker power) had tried to be patient and accommodating until the USA's psychopaths forced his hand, they always have to deal with some shit-Lib dupe accusing them of being blind to Putin's nastiness.  But even if Putin was totally the cause of this current "crisis" ... which he isn't ... Who the fuck are the blood-soaked, thieving maniacs like Biden and Blinken to criticize him.  Anyone who sides with the USA on any issue of foreign policy is a brainwashed imbecile.

And, lastly, ... I just gotta say that I don't find Joe Biden funny. I don't find Kamala Harris funny.  I don't find Pete Buttigieg funny.  The orchestrated destruction of Build Back Better was the nail in the coffin for an electoral response to global warming.  Biden (as senile as he is) knew what he was doing.  Harris and Buttigieg are deeply unpopular (with their party's base) because they are corrupt sociopathic losers.  The delusional shit-head Hillary Clinton is again sniffing around trying to capitalize on the Biden/Democratic Party's stumblings, to again try to put herself forward to take on Trump.  We're poised on the precipice of ecological armageddon and a genuine danger of fascism, and the rapist Biden pointedly refuses to use executive orders to help ordinary US-Americans, and therefore his own party's chances of victory!  And besides the senile, racist, mass-incarceration, blueprint for the Patriot Act, idiot Biden, the only other "contenders" they have are the shameless, principle-less Kamala Harris and the robotic, racist, weirdo Buttigieg and the always insanely entitled Clinton.

The reason that all these people are hated by everyone except die-hard partisan shit-heads is because they're corrupt, lying, arrogant filth.  I gave up on that party entirely in 2016.  


Saturday, January 8, 2022

Should Have Left Him To Die

 

I've never particularly been a bleeding heart. And the infuriating stupidity of this stupid mother-fucker makes him someone for whom my heart turns absolutely cold.  I first read his stupid name in this post from Owen at Northern Reflections.  

In that post, Owen recounts a news story about some Halifax mother hysterically relating how some 13-year old girl who is a friend of her daughter had her heart stop immediately after getting the vaccine.  Nova Scotia's top doctor, the IWK Health Centre, and Emergency Services Halifax all say this didn't happen.  Now, either all three of these public functionaries in Nova Scotia are IN on this big globalist plot to steal our freedoms, or, more likely, they're just public health managers doing their jobs.  And that given a choice between believing this woman and believing them, all sane people will believe them.  There was no 13-year old girl in Halifax whose heart stopped after she got a vaccine injection. In which case that stupid woman was crying and shrieking about something that didn't happen. (And her sort do a LOT of that.  Worrying about Sharia Law being imposed by a Canadian Taliban if she's not allowed to hate Muslims.  Worrying about how responding to global warming will have her busting rocks by with a pick-axe by the side of the highway whilst wearing a burlap sack. Worrying about how wearing a mask is the same as being Winston Smith in the Ministry of Truth.)

Why didn't she just stop to find out if this was true?  It's an obvious lie.  Did she call the girl's mother? Did she make any enquiries?  It never happened so if she'd taken any of those steps she would have found that out. But then she wouldn't have had the chance to make her attention-grabbing post on Facebook. Which is probably the whole point. Attention. Delusion. Arrogance. 

Owen's post continues:

This was simply untrue. But, in Saskatoon, defeated People's Party candidate Mark Friesen picked it up:

Fresh from a fourth-place finish as a People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidate in the federal election, he tweeted a link to Sheppard’s video along with his own video, filmed from behind the wheel of his truck.

“There are kids dropping like flies all over the world!” said Friesen, struggling to control his temper. “There are adults dropping like flies all over the world from this vaccine that you’ve now mandated! And the rest of you people, you just accept it because the government says so, because the f–king media says so, while we watch our kids die!”

Sheppard's video spread like a wildfire:

It doesn't appear that any of this is true.  And given the track-record of these fuck-faces: denying COVID-19 exists/claiming COVID-19 was manufactured by the Chinese/claiming COVID-19 is no worse than the seasonal flu/claiming that wearing a cloth or paper mask can kill you or drive you insane/participating in anti-mask/anti-public health rallies and then having their stupid asses end up in the hospital with COVID-19; etc., etc., ... it's 99.99999% the case that these hyperbolic claims aren't true.

So, none of their ridiculous claims about the dangers of vaccines are true.  The hospitals aren't filling up with vaccine victims. They have been filling up with COVID victims.  It's a simple as that.

But one "mr. perfect" said in the comments:

The aforementioned Mark Friesen, not long after spreading his lies on social media ended up being hospitalized with Covid-19, was intubated and spent the better part of 3 months recuperating, receiving physiotherapy to learn how to walk again after losing 60 lbs. Of course he denies he was sick with Covid, instead claiming he suffered from necrotizing pneumonia. Necrotizing pneumonia frequently happens to those who are intubated when suffering from Covid. I can't recall anyone I know Friesen's age who out of the blue gets NP and loses that much weight. Friesen still spends time on social media being anti vax and anti mask while suffering long Covid. I read somewhere intubated Covid patients have a 50% chance of passing away within the first year.

This made me want to learn more!  I soon found this link:

Friesen says Ontario hospital stay ‘initiated by COVID,’ has no plan to get vaccinated | 650 CKOM

Former People’s Party of Canada candidate Mark Friesen says he has “never denied” that COVID-19 landed him in hospital in Saskatchewan — and eventually Ontario — earlier this year.

“This was all initiated by COVID and I’ve never denied that,” Friesen told Gormley on Monday.

“There’s a narrative floating around — especially on social media — that I’m denying I had COVID. If you look at my Twitter, there’s a number of tweets I’ve put out that obviously this was started by COVID.”

Oh my! What a brave truth-teller!  He's never denied that what sent him to the hospital (an Ontario hospital because his province is run by a shit-head who panders to shit-heads like him and their own healthcare system became overwhelmed by the products of this mass shit-headedness) was the virus that he refused to get vaccinated for.  Notice how he has to turn his shit-headedeness around and struggle to portray himself as a man of principle and honour instead of just a worthless shit-head!

Friesen said his COVID infection eventually turned into pneumonia and then necrotizing pneumonia — one of the outcomes of COVID on the lungs, Friesen agreed — which has left him with three lung cavities. While initially doctors weren’t sure those would heal, Friesen said they’ve been reducing in size.

“(The) prognosis is good,” Friesen said. “Obviously, I have a long road ahead of me, but I’m hopeful.”

Hopeful of what you stupid fuck?!?  Hopeful that you'll recover your health and therefore continue to be a festering boil on an unwiped anus???  Why don't you instead take this opportunity to apologize to the overworked, exhausted healthcare workers who have to clean up after your stupidity? And the tax-payers who financed the treatment for your totally avoidable, self-inflicted health crisis???  And, perhaps, also (if you can pull your gaze away from your own reflection, which you bizarrely find infinitely fascinating) perhaps a thought for the people you've likely infected with your delusional stupidity?

...

His weeks-long hospital stays haven’t made the former Saskatoon-Grasswood candidate rethink his opinions on COVID-19 vaccination or mandatory mask requirements, though.

“I cherish freedom, I cherish the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I cherish people’s ability to make their own choice and I will continue to fight for that,” he said. “Regardless of the experience I’ve had, that doesn’t change my principles or my values around freedom. It’s too important.”

Friesen continued: “Without freedom, we have nothing. It’s just something I’ll never back down from.”

What in the sweet name of Christ are you babbling about you stupid, stupid, stupid mother-fucker???  "Freedom"? You yammering shit-head!  Do you remember that virus that landed you in the hospital?  That virus that would have KILLED you had selfless, heroic healthcare workers not worked long and hard to carry you through and treat you despite your arrogance and stupidity???  You have intimate knowledge of the dangers of this virus.  You know how horrible it can be.  Having suffered from it you must now admit that the stories of thousands of seniors dying in long-term care homes, the 30,000 Canadians dead (even after the lockdowns and social distancing and the wearing of masks by people who aren't self-aggrandizing, selfish, narcissistic delusional shit-heads) are not hoaxes.  This isn't a "plandemic" engineered by global elites.  The virus is real.  It has killed 30,000 Canadians.  Every stupid thing you said about the virus you now know was completely wrong.  It almost killed you.  But you babble about your unimportant opinions of "freedom" as if you still think you're a hero instead of a worthless shit-head.

Friesen also shared information on his own health status, stating he is precluded from vaccination because of an “autoimmune situation.”

He explained he has had opinions given to him by “a number of doctors that I’ve been in discussion with and they’ve all recommended do not take the (vaccine) based on my health condition.”

More stupid lies.  Listen Friesen, you fuck-face, given the fact that COVID almost killed you, and you've been exposed to the world as a complete moron, you're going to have to provide more specifics about your excuses for remaining unvaccinated than this vague drivel about "an 'autoimmune situation'" conveyed to you buy "a number of doctors that [you've] beein discussion with." You know, most doctor's offices are closed. But somehow you've been able to talk to "a number" of doctors about your vauge "autoimmune situation."  How coincidental that the stupid loser who has always thought that COVID-19 was a Jewish plot to take away his arid notions of "freedom" just so happens to have an "autoimmune situation" that happily coincides with his belief that getting a vaccine would be yet another surrender to the Elders of Zion!

Friesen also shared a post about that to his Facebook page on Friday.

“What about all the other people throughout our province and our country that have these conditions, that can’t take a (vaccine) but are still being discriminated against in our society?” he asked.

“Because of the vitriol and the hate that’s directed to me, I’ve chosen to make it public, so maybe … some of these people will derive some understanding instead of wishing me dead.”

If I had the time, and a strong enough stomach, I would research this asshole's social media and see what he thinks about Muslims, the First Nations, environmentalists, etc.,  Since he wants to wallow in nauseating self-pity.

On the issue of masks, Friesen told Gormley his primary concern is that they are mandated.

“If we’re social distancing, what are we wearing masks for?” he posed. “If you want to wear a mask, go ahead, wear a mask, I don’t care … but don’t tell me what I have to do.”

JEEEZZIZZ KRYYYYST!!! It's not all about you, you stupid fuck!!! There's a goddamned respiratory virus going around you big fucking baby!!! So wear a fucking mask!!! Asshole!!!

There's a little bit more to the article but it's just more opportunity for this stammering idiot to babble on about concepts he knows nothing about.

But fine.  Mr. Friesen [stupidly] does not want to get vaccinated.  Again: Fine.  So, if he shows up at the hospital emergency room, whining like the entitled, arrogant dipshit that he is about how they just HAVE to save him from the consequences of his own actions, he should be dumped outside on the sidewalk and he can either have his family or friends take him home to die or he can just die there on the street.  Which is what they should have done the first time he came crawling to them for help.

Fuck these people.