One example of the flexibility and falsehood of international law that Carney admitted to at Davos would be his own theft of $2 billion in Venezuelan gold reserves held in the vaults of the Bank of England. He was the bank's governor at the time and the UK was (and remains) united in destroying the Bolivarian Revolution that wanted to use Venezuela's oil wealth for the general population rather than local and foreign elites. Carney's "argument" was that the US puppet/douchebag Juan Guano was Venezuela's legitimate ruler and not Maduro who had only been elected in an election.
With the lawless, murderous, racist, sexist, fascist ramapaging of the Trump regime in Minnesota, and the way that the regime's supporters not only defend it, but celebrate it, ... the sickening reality of how debased the world has become is evident for all to see.
If you go back through the pages of this blog to the years when stephen harper was desecrating all of the customs and conventions and the very letter of the law of our parliamentary system, you will see that I was constantly "harping" about how dangerous and disgusting his behaviour was. I also expressed my dismay at the lack of push-back against harper; both from the super-radicals who believe that the real world is a waste of time and that if only everything magically changed, their little Marxist grouplet or "anarchist" collective would sweep away all before them and so to hell with worrying about something as ridiculous as Parliament and the semi-quasi-democracy it represents - AND - from the "respectable" left and center who thought shouting "SHAME!!" [leftists] or "Tsk-tsk!" [centrists] was the extent of their responsibilities.
I'm not saying that Canadians' incapacity at resisting harper produced the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. I'm saying that progressives and leftists failures to counteract the fascist turn of decaying capitalism has produced [in the USA] a fascist movement, united under a grifter, who has, in the real world, with real resources, created an army of lawless goons, inspired by racist ideology, targeting scapegoats and anyone who wants to resist them.
As economic conditions deteriorate, more people become insular, reactionary, "conservative." We had certain rights under our system of government. We could have built upon them. We should be outraged when ... ahh, I've too much to say and no time really to say it.
Remember when harper stymied investigations into human rights abuses in Afghanistan? Remember when he stole an election? Remember when he refused to provide Parliament with cost estimates of his policies? Remember when the falsified expert advice to justify cutting funding for KAIROS? Remember when he used his stolen majority to ram through gigantic omnibus bills? Remember when Elections Canada refused to seriously investigate his election fraud and selectively granted legal immunity to different sets of witnesses?
As a people, we should be passionate about defending the rights we have. Instead, the far-left smirks and shrugs their shoulders and says something eloquent about "bourgeois liberties" while the progressives mouth whatever platitudes their own hypocritical leadership in Liberal, NDP, Green, Democratic, whatever parties tell them to say. (And then hope they forget those platitudes and what they were supposed to represent whenever one of those centrist parties gain power.) And, of course, the vast majority of people, incapable of lifting their eyes from their own immediate concerns, simply ignore it all as a farce.
We see the results of this massive human-societal failure in the murderous, illegal, unconstitutional behaviour of Trump's ICE.
As I understand it, there are some legitimate economic grievances that many Iranians have against their government. This was also the case in the early days in the protests against Assad in Syria. But as with Syria, so too with Iran. USA and Israeli spies soon attached themselves to these protests and used them as a pretext to violently attack the government. And if you don't think the US government would start killing dozens of protesters if US-Americans started murdering police officers, just look at that country today, when police there go ape-shit when US-Americans peacefully protest police violence.
Anyway, a few days ago I finished Fresh Green Life by Sebastian Castillo.
I knew that it was about a guy in his thirties who has been living in self-imposed isolation for a year who goes to a News Year's Eve party with friends and colleagues from his university days. You can read the linked review if you want. But I will just say that I enjoyed the book. If held a few surprises for me as it went along. I found the language of the narrator a little pompous at first. I wasn't sure if that was intentional on the part of the writer to mock the narrator, or whether it was the writer's own voice. Whatever it was, it faded and the rest of the time was smooth sailing. In the end it was (for me) a hilarious send-up of the lives of academics. [Here's a link to the narrator's favourite film.]
Pappe argues that Israel's creation involved deliberate ethnic-cleansing:
In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine ) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, beginning in the 1948 war for independence and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet , in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units organized by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the “architect of ethnic cleansing. The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948 and 1949, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state.
It's depressing reading Pappe's conclusion, written in 2006, about the slim possibilities for peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, knowing how far from that outcome the reality in 2026 is.
I didn't know much about the "war" between Israel and the Palestinians and other Arab states. I had been raised to believe that the Arab states told the Palestinians to temporarily leave so as to be out of the way while they crushed the Israeli state as it was being born. I never thought that their leaving justified not letting them return, but I learned a long time ago from Christopher Hitchens that there had never been such an order.
The reality is that the Palestinians were hardly armed. They weren't happy with the UN partition plan but those within the borders of what was to be Israel had resigned themselves to living in "Israel" when the time came. They weren't prepared for what the Israelis had planned for them.
Iraq, Syria and Jordan sent troops that never left the lands that had been allotted to Palestine by the UN.
Egypt sent a mostly untrained militia into Gaza with little preparation and bombed Tel Aviv and some other towns for a few days.
Jordan's King planned to take the West Bank for himself in return for allowing Israel to take the rest of all that it wanted.
And all of this ethnic cleansing had been planned long before WWII and The Holocaust.
Some work colleagues recommended this guy. You can read about him in the link. I think I'll find books where he talks about other religions and other stuff that actually exists in the world. Some people swear by meditation and maybe there's something to it. But OSHO and another guy I read last year say stuff like:
"Maybe it will take six months, maybe a year, but eventually clearing your mind and sitting at peace WILL have a profound effect and your life will be positively transformed."
Either that, or your subconscious makes a deal with your conscious mind (which is worried about the sunk-cost fallacy) and you'll delude yourself that turning off your brain and taking the advice of charlatans HAS led to self-improvement.
A lot of it is just vague stuff about love and openness and oneness and bliss. Nothing is described concretely. The universe didn't make us to feel permanent joy. I just don't subscribe to this stuff and I'm not going to work hard at turning off my thinking so as to make the suggestions of a cult leader more acceptable to me.
2026-03-10
Last week I finished John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost.
The man was a great talent. The language is magnificent. It almost redeems the silly story that it's based on. I'm not the sort of reader that Milton intended the work for. I haven't even read the Bible. And I have only a cursory knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics.
Parts of the story that irritated me: A) The animals in Eden are just invented by God and named by Adam. Darwin's Theory of Evolution was hundreds of years in the future, so I can't fault Milton for not inventing any coherent reason for the variety of animals in Eden. It's just that it reminds one of how empty present-day "creationism" is. B) The numerous entreaties of God or His angels to tell humanity not to try to think too hard or question too much. When you think of the wasted centuries when people were told to focus on their imaginary God and to avoid trying to understand the world. C) The grotesque misogyny. Eve doesn't need to be told that she is incapable of understanding stuff about the moon and the stars or any of the other deep concepts that Adam thinks about or discusses with God or the Angels. That the woman Eve is the source of humanity's downfall is obviously the product of a patriarchal religion of a patriarchal society. All the evil and abuse that men have inflicted on women when inspired by this bullshit story. D) Milton's God sets everything up and he knows what's going to happen. He knew that Satan would escape from Hell and manage to slip past the angels guarding the perimeter of Eden and then seduce Eve into violating the one commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What supposedly save God from being a sadistic maniac is that human beings have Free Will. Except that we don't. E) Milton's hatred of other Christians he doesn't agree with. Especially Catholic. I could see him not liking the Dominicans. But to think that a Franciscan monk, inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, especially one who lived and died before the Protestant Reformation, was going to go to Hell as an infidel, ... it's too much.
All that having been said, as someone who believed in this stuff as a child, Milton's language manages to capture the beauty of the idea of the Garden of Eden. There are parts when he discusses the love of Adam and Eve and it does sound beautiful. And, the scenes with Satan and the rebel angels have a horrible grandeur.
Here's a quote from the review:
When reading this epic poem, it’s clear why it has become a classic.
There are numerous references to Greek and Roman mythology and to
ancient history. I had to check the notes frequently to understand the
allusions. It made me wish I knew the classics better. It also made me
read slowly. Though we all know the story of the Fall, Milton speculates
on many of the issues the biblical account doesn’t explicitly address.
We wonder why God allows Satan to remain free to deceive people. We
ponder the relationship between the spirit world and the material world.
We question what motivates Satan and his forces to oppose almighty God.
We are also baffled how people living in a paradise could ever be
convinced that God is being cruel and unfair to them. Even though Milton
speculates, he at least offers food for thought.
I used to hang around on rabble.ca's "babble" until May, 2006, and, since then, I've been found at www.enmasse.ca and www.breadnroses.ca. Even more lately, I've been at EnMasse, but also numerous blogs from the progressive side.
I'm sometimes rude to people and I've been accused of "schoolyard taunts," so, here's my schoolyard.
