The Usurper's Christmas Message

I'm sort of an all-or-nothing kinda guy. You know, if I don't believe in a religion, then I stop going to church. Canada, and Canadians, are either historical entities trying to build a just, humane society for themselves and others, or they're not. Leftists should either dedicate themselves to achieving change or they should just STFU.

Christmas is supposedly a season when Christians celebrate the birth of their saviour, but in our more secular times it's really supposed to be about reaching out to others and gifting each other in the spirit of self-sacrifice that this Jesus character supposedly did when he had himself born amongst us. Or, it's supposed to be family and friends getting together, blah, blah,blah. It's also a bunch of pagan winter festivals dressed up in Christian garb.

Thank god for the three wise men though! They brought bona-fide presents and thus serve as the real reason for the season; consumerism. Kids love Christmas, partly because of the lights and the decorations, but really, it's about the material goods.

I stopped liking this holiday a while ago. Stress. Family get-togethers always meant stress. There were a couple of years when I had a house and could afford to entertain friends, but those days are gone. But Christmas keeps coming every year. The shmaltzy, bullshit Christmas carols by musical acts seeking to cash-in keep playing in all the malls and other such spaces. Canadians continue to abuse the First Nations. We continue to belch carbon gases into the atmosphere. More and more, Canadians appear to me to be a selfish, childish, deluded people. The "spirit of the holidays" is nothing more than people getting together with people they already associate with and to hell with everyone else.

Bullshit.

And speaking of bullshit; nothing epitomizes the emptiness and hypocrisy of the holidays better than the idea of a cruel psychopath like stephen harper bothering us with a "Christmas Message" based on the fact that since he stole the office of prime minister he's entitled to spew some sort of seasonal nonsense at us.

I read his stupid statement and I was going to go through with it, but it would be redundant. I already have no time for the seasonal bullshit and I've already said what I think of this bullshit artists. Who cares what he had to say? It was all meaningless lies anyway.

Revolution - the ONLY Solution

There's just no other way. We cannot "reform" capitalism. At least not in the way that US Democrats, Canadian Liberals and "social democrat" NDPr's want to do it. They want painless reform, ... as in reform that doesn't anger the powerful. It can't happen. It's their mewling "vision" of compassion and social justice that's produced this sorry state.

The root of all the terrorism and war and most of the problems in the world is human greed. The movement of liberal democracy produced substantial benefits to many people since the 16th Century. But liberal capitalism grew along with it, and while it too produced many benefits, it also produced a lot of misery and its time has passed. It has now metastasized and is devouring its host, liberal capitalism. That and it's put humanity on a suicidal trajectory.

We need an eco-rational economy. We need to destroy social inequality. We need rational, fact-based politics, not the capitalist-sponsored abominations of Barack Obama, george w. bush, stephen harper and Rob Ford. To achieve this, we must have a revolution. A democratic, mass-based revolution. One that builds on the quasi-democracy and set of rights that we now have. We must fight to rollback government incursions against this democracy and these rights. What we should not do is pursue the shit-head strategy of certain anarchist radicals, or Marxist radicals, or any sort of radical who believes that the hard-won agency and autonomy ordinary people enjoy is utter bullshit and that we should reject everything entirely and retreat into individual insignificance. (This pointless and petty refusal was called "Going Galt" [as in John Galt, as in Ayn Rand's tedious novel] when right-wing idiots responded to Democratic Party victories in the United States, and it's called "human strike" by marginal, unimportant anarchist thinkers on the left.

We need to think and act big and in accordance with forces as they actually exist.

There is no other way.

Wut We's Got's To Do

My point about the lack of a response to the TTC fare increase was that I, who have been told several times that my plans are too grandiose, am pointing out the sheer invisibility of the standard leftist response to problems. If I had my druthers, I'd be organizing a transit-users' strike, or an occupation of City Hall and Queen's Park, until said powers-that-be find the goddamned revenues from out of their tax-cuts for the rich or their general corruption funds, to pay for the existing service levels and to invest the billions more that are needed to restore the system to a state of decency.

Overall, to defeat capitalism, we need to democratically expand the rights of workers within their workplaces. We do this through the present constitutional-liberal rights system. Because that is the hegemonic system, and the most peaceful way of doing this massive switcherroo of power.

It needs to be something big. The brain-dead status-quo has failed and will continue to fail.

And What Is Everyone Doing About Toronto's TTC Fare Increase?

Just to bring non-Torontonians up to speed: Toronto has gone from having what was widely regarded to be a good public transit system to having what is widely regarded as being a bad transit system. Bus service in the outer city is deplorable. Long waits to get on over-crowded buses, or to watch over-crowded buses pass your stop. Streetcar service that can mean it's faster to walk from Yonge to Bathurst than it is to wait for a streetcar. An over-crowded subway system prone to signals breakdowns and other interruptions.

This has happened because for the past few decades, neo-liberals have convinced people that taxes are an unmitigated evil, that the public sector is a complete waste of money, and that nothing can be achieved via democratic collective action. It's gotten to the point where you'll hear from a surprising number of ignoranmuses saying that the TTC should be privatized; thereby revealing their total cluelessness.

So, due to inflation, increased ridership, and what-not, the TTC is raising its fares by a nickel next year and again in the summer, just to maintain its existing poor service level.

What are the various groups dedicated to improving public transit, or transit users' rights, going to do about this? From where I'm sitting, the answer appears to be nothing. I've not heard of any protests. I've not seen any literature being distributed. I've not seen anyone.

Why don't I do something?

I tried to get Canadians to do something about a stolen election, to no effect. The progressive movement's big players likewise did nothing, although they could have done something with their amount of resources. This fare increase is an outrage, but we can't escape from the trap of kabuki protest, and so we do nothing.

Whose Side Are You On?

Do you stand with the victims or with the aggressors?

Do you stand with the tortured or the torturers?

Do you stand with the oppressed or with the oppressors?

Do you stand with the raped or the rapists?

Do you stand with the weak or with the strong?

Do you stand with the poor or with the rich?

It's amazing how many "conservative" bloggers stand on the wrong side of things, isn't it?

NORTH KOREA!!!!!

Last summer, North Korea's mad ambitions to attack the United States [actually desperate blustering in the face of USA/South Korean provocations] were all over the news until a bomb exploded at the Boston Marathon. "Poof!" North Korea's inscrutable threat vanished into the thin air from whence it came.

But now North Korea is back in the news. Supposedly the boy-dictator is killing family members and stuff.

It's either the tonic for a slow news day or North Korea is being targeted. (Not that I have any respect for that regime.)

Soldiers's Suicides: Too Little, Too Late

So retired general Rick  Hillier is calling for action, a public inquiry, a Royal Commission, something, into the recent spate of soldier suicides, and, as well, he offers qualified criticism of the harpercons' Veterans Charter:

The other area Hillier pointed to for improvement was the new Veterans Charter, in particular the part of the charter that replaced a pension for life or payment system with lump-sum awards and allowances.
"Many of us, certainly, almost all of us, agree that the charter is now lacking," he said.
He said the system now does not provide ill and injured veterans with the support they will need throughout their lives. And it does not go far enough to make sure they are properly taken care of for their entire life.

Too little, too late Mr. Hillier. You, more than anyone else, are responsible for our troops being sent to the hotly-contested Kandahar Province. And the time to have spoken out against the harpercons' symbol of their obvious cynicism and hypocrisy was before their bullshit Veterans' Charter became law.

[Just to point out: As progressives have called for social-economic policies to give young men a greater range of choices than unemployment, poverty wages or crime, whereas "conservatives" say they have "zero tolerance" for crime and advocate locking them up, only to end up smoking crack with them on a regular basis, ... so too do progressives despise war while still calling for decent conditions for ordinary soldiers as long as they exist, whereas "conservatives" make all kinds of ceremonial bows to the greatness of the military, only to repeatedly cast them aside like trash should they become wounded or otherwise useless.]