Power Corrupts

It's a generalization but it's largely true. If you have power and you're not accountable for how you use it, you'll probably start to take advantage of it. They talk about it in this episode of The Young Turks.

This cop supposedly had the right to impound their car, but he lets them off easy for a mere thirty bucks. His cover for the bribe are some tickets to a policeman's function for ten bucks each. He might even think he's doing them a huge favour. Who knows. But as the hosts say, he doesn't even care that he's being filmed it seems. Because he's got this feeling of inviolateness. He's got it from the lack of accountability, the social and political power of the police in the United States (and, in Canada).

It's the same thing with corporate criminals and corrupt politicians. To a great degree, they're untouchable. Until they get so full of themselves that they try to fight in a higher weight category than they're used to. Then they find that their crimes aren't ignored or forgotten. (The guy who owns the aluminum siding business might be able to murder a prostitute, but not the wife of the shopping mall owner.) If you want to see how vile and disgusting they can get, just check out Dick Cheney, Halliburton and KBR. Some people might be wealthier, but they don't have the connections with the state, the military, the military-industrial complex, etc.. Some powerful, wealthy people might find Dick Cheney's conniving and super-corruption to be squalid and have no wish to even be associated with the vermin. They're content with their vast power in their own social circle. For them it's simpler: They invent insane financial instruments (like mortgage-backed securities or collateralized debt obligations) that rob people blind, implode on their makers and necessitate (for them) that they all march to Washington and demand to be bailed-out by the taxpayers.

But anyway, Cheney did what he did, and does what he does, because he's effectively above the law. stephen harper thought he was above the law, but he's not that powerful. Nigel Wright looks and acts as if the law can't touch him. Maybe it can't. As I said in this post, this is a fight amongst elites, and none of them want to see it spin out of control. This explains the RCMP's ludicrous act of charging Michael Duffy with bribery but not Wright, who paid the bribe. (Duffy was not charged under the Parliament of Canada Act, but some other bribery law. The long and the short of it was that the RCMP could pretend that Wright would not personally benefit from whatever Duffy was supposed to do for the money. But under the Parliament of Canada Act, it's simply illegal to clandestinely pay a Senator for any reason. Which should go without saying. But it has to be said because Canada has always been a pseudo-democracy, corrupted by money and power. And it has veered into ridiculous territory under the shallow cynicism and the arrogance of the lamebrain stephen harper.

It will only get worse. harper's stench has contaminated this country to a depressingly deep degree. McGuinty's own resort to contempt of the legislature, to obscure his partisan wasting of $750 million on the gas plant relocations would not have been conceivable before harper.

How are we going to stop this?

By making politicians accountable.

How do we make them accountable?

Well, the first stage of accountability is Parliament. We have, all of us, done very little to protest the harpercons' routine abuse of Parliament and their neutering of Parliament's ability to hold the government to account. Having already said that Canada is a corrupt pseudo-democracy, I'm under no illusions about how good a job Parliament could do if allowed to do its job. But I think it's something to build on and therefore something to protect. Things like the harpercons instruction manual for making parliamentary committees dysfunctional, altering documents, not providing cost information, pushing through omnibus legislation with the frequent resort to cloture, and now, issuing Orders In Council without announcing them, make it impossible for the legislative branch (our representatives) to keep tabs on the actions of the Crown (the executive branch).

An unaccountable monarchy.

That's enough for today. I'll pick this up tomorrow.

I Have a Potty Mouth

 I notice that I say piss, shut, fuck, and other words a lot. It probably detracts from the impact of my critiques of mainstream political figures. Like that fucking shit-assed asshole Rob Ford. Or that moronic fuckwad stephen harper. Or that dick-brained smegma stain Tim Hudak. Or the putrid, piss-faced neo-liberal economists. The blood-stained asswipe imperialists.

Oh my goodness gracious me! Those people require a much more dignified, sober evisceration than my expletive-laced tirades.

IOW: I'm tired and don't have much to say today!

Earl Cowan on the Refugee Crisis

So apparently this picture comes from a site called "We Are Earl Cowan." I don't know it it's a Twitter feed, or what it is. I don't really care. It could even be satire. I'm not going to check. If it's a tribute site, it's fitting that they chose a picture of him sneering. Anyone who would proudly identify with such a stupid putz would obviously lack the sense to know what's a good picture and what isn't.

It's brainless ugly farts like Cowan (bigoted overall, racist, stupid, angry) who keep the "conservative" bowel movement going. Chugging away. They've been in the driver's seat for a long time haven't they? Helping harper steal a majority at last count. Foisting Mike Harris upon us and scaring us with Tim Hudak. Electing crack-smoking criminal gangster Rob Ford as Mayor of Toronto. Cheering on the violations of citizens' rights at the G20. And being the collective bile that supports Chris Alexander and the harpercon party's denial of medical care for refugees (in violation of a clear Supreme Court of Canada order that they restore it).

Can you imagine what Earl ("Go back to China Olivia!") Cowan's thoughts on the refugee crisis must be? I know. I've been arguing with racist trolls since yesterday. Incoherent, ugly, deluded garbage. Selfishness and greed. Ignorance and bigotry. It would be difficult to know precisely what the fool's thoughts on the refugee crisis actually are. This is a cretin who thinks the Duffy scandal is about income tax cheating and who berated journalists as "lying pieces of shit" for getting the story (as he imagines it) wrong.

It's not important exactly what he thinks. Regardless, it is incoherent and ugly. And deadly. We have allowed these fools to lord it over us for far too long. (And I do mean "allow." harper has his majority through goddamned fraud and we have acquiesced to that.) It is high time we sent these shit-heads packing.

Let them yell at their television sets in impotence. 

Piling On Chris Alexander

Chris Alexander rejected his claim

I've always despised Chris Alexander. He is, as Montreal Simon so eloquently describes it, a shameless servant of stephen harper. Alexander will do anything to please harper and thereby win power and perks. In his constant abuse of anything that might be considered human values and ideals to pursue his shallow gratification, Chris Alexander is a textbook example of a psychopath.  Some psychopaths go on to become CEO's or inventors or entrepreneurs or some other occupation that requires ruthless ambition. Less intelligent psychopaths do things like kill kittens and make cannibalistic snuff films. Chris Alexander is somewhere between these two extremes. He's not completely brainless, obviously, but he's not particularly bright either.

That's why he flew off the handle at Rosemary Barton when his self-serving drivel about his and his government's refugee policies came under assault on "Power and Politics" last night. Completely disoriented at the state of the world outside the bubble of the Conservative Party, cowed government bureaucrats and sycophantic, ass-kissing staffers, Alexander blurted out that the media hasn't given the refugee crisis the attention it deserved, falsely claiming that the CBC has only done two stories on the issue. According to this piece, "Power and Politics" has had 32 stories on the refugee crisis, including 5 debates and a one-on-one with Chris Alexander himself. Chris Alexander could not appear as a panelist on the show because he was a government minister.

Alexander has just announced he's "temporarily suspending" his campaign and is returning to Ottawa. In other words, he's going to hide from the press again, fast-track some Syrian Christian families' applications and construct a damage-control campaign. None of which will bring that dead boy or his family back to life. That dead boy and the rest of his family actually applied for refugee status in Canada. They have family in British Columbia and they were going to sponsor them. Their MP personally handed their file to Alexander who promised he would look into it. Their refugee claim was rejected, and here we find ourselves.

A couple of things: It's a fair question as to why the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, etc., don't take in more refugees. Even when the question is asked by racist, war monger "right-wing" harpercon stooge supporters. It's especially a fair question when the Syrian war and the Libyan chaos are fomented by those countries (or, more accurately, their corrupt, Sunni-sectarian nutbar oligarchs). It's also disgusting the way the European oligarchs and the grassroots racists and outright nazis are fighting to keep the refugees out, when Europe has done so much to plunder and disrupt so much of the world. But the mark of a great country (which Canada isn't and won't be until we live up to our treaty obligations to the First Nations and then go beyond them) would be to take in as many refugees from such horror zones as possible, no matter what other countries are doing. And if other countries aren't pulling their weight, then we should take in MORE, not less!

Secondly, notice how Alexander's message was to double-down on the need for military intervention. (Which reminds me; Canada is obligated to take in tens of thousands of fleeing Syrians because, like the scum-bags in the House of Saud, we are contributors to the evil of the Great Bullshit War on Terror.) There wouldn't have been time to discuss that separate issue on top of harpercon failure on refugees, and I don't think either Barton, MacCallum, or Dewar would be equipped to deal with it anyway, but it's testimony to Alexander's insanity and stupidity that he advocates more war.

Chris Alexander? You stupid fuckhead? You mention the Iraqi refugees Canada has taken in. Why are there MILLIONS of Iraqi refugees? Because of the chaos and bloodshed unleashed by george dubya bush in that country. People are fleeing Libya? Why? Because of the chaos and bloodshed unleashed by the USA and NATO (including Canada) as we turned that country over to Saudi-backed Islamist fundamentalists. Same damn thing in Syria. It's your crazed, mindless, brainless, witless imperialist war that has created both the refugee problem and the ISIS, Al Qaeda problem.

It's death, misery, homelessness and drowned little boys, because of your stupidity, your evil, your vile, psychopathic nature.

Like Montreal Simon, I hope and pray that one day Chris Alexander and all the rest of that harpercon scum will be investigated and, hopefully, tried for crimes against humanity.

Human garbage, the whole lot of them.

A refugee camp probably in the Jordanian desert.

A Great Post From Kirby Cairo ....

"The Sociology of Neo-Liberalism in One Easy Lesson"

Give it a read!

I'm Thinking of Becoming a Unitarian

When I participated in an "Anti-Torture Caravan" with the magnificent Matthew Behrens, (who would have thought that such a thing was ever necessary?) I was struck at how almost every place we stopped was a church.  The spaces set aside for people to collectively participate in larger, non-commercial initiatives were generally churches.

What is "public space"? Where can you go to meet with others and not have the owner, or some agent of the owner, evict you for any reason whatsoever or no reason at all? Where can people without means congregate; socialize, without being told to "move along"? Public libraries have become islands for the marginalized, but they're also places for quiet study and contemplation. (Or they're supposed to be.)

Union halls can be places where people congregate for purposes other than commerce. But entrance there is a product of employment. Churches seemed to be places where people from within the atomized, capitalist-consumerist "communities" can gather to celebrate unspecified collective values, such as "human rights," "environmentalism," "peace," etc., About the only ones that come quickly to mind anyway.

Now, I have nothing against religious people in general. I don't think religious faith is a sign of stupidity. But being an atheist, I couldn't see how I could participate in such a community. I thought about organizing local leftists to construct alternative spaces, but the activist community is generally full of obnoxious types; ego-maniacs (such as myself) and intolerant types who refuse to have anything to do with someone who disagrees with one important aspect of their gamut of opinions.

So it turns out that the Unitarians welcome atheists. Nobody is supposed to preach about their own hobby-horses, or deride the beliefs of others. I can deal with that. I have no intention of preaching non-belief to anyone. (I do support the right, as well as the importance, of atheist spokespeople like Richard Dawkins to argue against religious delusion. I think "belief" in the unknowable creates all sorts of needless confusion.)

So, there you have it.

harper's stench Will Linger

For me, the most important issue in this election is (as it was last time) respect for our Parliamentary traditions.Because not only is harper unwilling to modify his policies so that they'll coincide with reality, .. he has destroyed the very ability of the legislature to observe him and communicate with the public about what they've found. More, he'll shred our constitutional rights to oppose him; and he'll do it again and again, regardless of how many times the Supreme Court tries to shut him down.efeat, his stench will linger. I think I should tell you all that I'm typing this with my eyes closed. Allergies have made my eyes so itchy and watery that I can't see. It got too much about three seconds ago. So what the hell.

harper's stench has already infected other politicians and parties. McGuinty of the Ontario Liberals is the second Canadian premier after harper to demonstrate contempt for the legislature. Thanks to harper's precedent.
harper's secrecy, abuse of process, attacks on our rights, ... they'll all have their influence on subsequent politicians. It is up to us to treat this infection and destroy it.
But I hold no great hopes that we're capable of that.