I can't speak or understand German, but if anyone who reads this can, you can check this out. (I liked what I read about this guy.)
Yeah, I'm still busy.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Torture Never Stops
I actually feel like saying a lot but i don't have the time or the energy to say any of it. So here's a video:
G'night all. (Darn fruit-flies!)
G'night all. (Darn fruit-flies!)
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
More Random Thoughts About Rob Ford and His Stupid Supporters
Thirty-nine percent of uber-moron mayoral candidate Rob Ford's supporters like him A LOT. And why shouldn't they? Stupid people have to stick together.
Big surprise: Fuck-head Ford's budgetary numbers don't add up. They're nonsense. In this he shares a lot with Fuck-head Finance Minister Flaherty.
But here's the thing, ... if Ford wins and inflicts his disastrous delusions up Canada's largest city, don't expect his disgustingly stupid, lying, hypocritical, howling ignoramus supporters to admit that once more, their stupid decisions and their stupid leaders have destroyed anything.
These dishonest, cowardly scum blame Obama for everything that's wrong economically when the fucking financial crash and recession clearly started the previous September with bush II. The shit was hitting the fan at least four months before Obama took office. But these die-hard shit-heads are so debased as to imagine that bush II's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were successes!
The same fools refuse to admit that Mike Harris was a disaster. That stephen harper is not a catastrophe. Being a right-wing stupid fool means never having to say you're sorry.
Fuck 'em.
Big surprise: Fuck-head Ford's budgetary numbers don't add up. They're nonsense. In this he shares a lot with Fuck-head Finance Minister Flaherty.
But here's the thing, ... if Ford wins and inflicts his disastrous delusions up Canada's largest city, don't expect his disgustingly stupid, lying, hypocritical, howling ignoramus supporters to admit that once more, their stupid decisions and their stupid leaders have destroyed anything.
These dishonest, cowardly scum blame Obama for everything that's wrong economically when the fucking financial crash and recession clearly started the previous September with bush II. The shit was hitting the fan at least four months before Obama took office. But these die-hard shit-heads are so debased as to imagine that bush II's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were successes!
The same fools refuse to admit that Mike Harris was a disaster. That stephen harper is not a catastrophe. Being a right-wing stupid fool means never having to say you're sorry.
Fuck 'em.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Burma VJ
Watched the movie Burma VJ (VJ="video journalist") and I've got mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's the real deal. A black-and-white struggle between an unpopular, corrupt, military dictatorship on one side and incredibly brave, civil rights-democracy champions on the other. More than this, the documentary footage, which was only supposed to show a slice-of-life look at the everyday work of these underground video journalists, ended up showing one of the most massive public protests against the military dictatorship since the national uprising (which had been crushed) in 1988.
But watching these people fighting for democracy also made me depressed, knowing how corporate-capitalism has rendered democracy in the "advanced" countries into a revolting farce (with the current absolute stupidity of the two parties of Wall Street in the USA showing the absolute depths that pure capitalist culture can drag a political culture down to).
As well, watching the movie made me think about the futility of traditional tactics of pro-democracy movements, both in the world's dictatorships and in the nominal democracies. You see, in the film, the dictatorship doubles the price fuel, which effectively doubled the price of many necessities (bus fares, food, cooking oil, etc.,) and this sparks massive discontent. The dissent is muted however because the dictatorship has thousands upon thousands of spies and informants everywhere and if one is heard criticizing the regime it could lead to imprisonment and torture. Over a couple of days, first a single protester, then a small group of protesters, stage anti-government demonstrations in Rangoon's market, which are quickly smashed. But then, Buddhist monks march to protest the economic policies and the suppression of democracy and the government is temporarily confused. The people are devoutly Buddhist and monks aren't supposed to be touched. For four days the monks march and more and more people join them, and I could imagine the generals arguing whether to let them march and let the movement peter-out, or whether to crush them before the protests turn into a whirlwind that can't be controlled.
In the end, the monks are attacked in the night and only a few manage to make it out to the next day's protests which are led mostly by students. But against the students the government has no compunction about firing live ammunition and the protests are destroyed. And the thirty-year dictatorship survives to oppress for another year or decade or whatever. The VJ's, by smuggling out the images of the protests help tell the world about this democracy movement, the weakness of the regime, and the violence of the authorities.
It's depressing to watch. Both because the protests are crushed but also because of the wider reality. At certain points in the movie, these people trapped in this horrible situation wonder if the rest of the world cares about what's happening in Burma. I could tell them that people do care, just like they care about Darfur, and Haiti, and Pakistan, and everywhere. The problem is that people's knowledge about what to do is hampered by ignorance as to how the world works and ignorance about the culpability and evil of their own governments. At one point in the film, the importance of the VJ's work is shown by a clip of the embarrassingly stupid bush II stumbling through a statement about the horrible oppression of the Burmese dictatorship! To the sane minority in the world, listening to a moronic war criminal exercising his ginormous hypocrisy muscles is painful in the extreme, but far too many millions of people saw him as the "leader of the free world" the "world's greatest democracy" and they expect that the USA will right wrongs and defend the weak anywhere and wonder why it doesn't.
Finally, what I've been saying for quite a while as "thwap," ... we really don't know how to respond to this evil. In Burma, they marched and the shouted, until they were attacked, imprisoned, or mowed-down in the streets, upon which they stopped marching and shouting. Here in Canada, where our masters have the inconvenience of our already possessing certain political and civil rights, work mightily to nullify these rights. They have ENTIRELY SUCCESSFULLY engineered a transfer of wealth from the vast majority to a tiny minority and through propaganda and outright lies have managed to make the middle-levels blame the poorest and the weakest for their problems. In this process, the lies and propaganda and the POWER of the capitalist elites have even served to make left-wing politicians move steadily rightward as their own thinkers come to see the failed neo-liberal consensus as the only option.
The small minority of people who actively protest are marginalized, demonized, attacked and their civil rights are routinely violated, and the general public yawns in indifference at this and at wholesale shredding of the democratic process and the rule of law. But even this small minority of people who know better than most can't seem to shake the delusion that we can change our evil elites by marching and shouting. If only there are enough of us marching and shouting, things will change.
No. The situation in Burma shows that IF we were to somehow miraculously break through the barriers of delusion and apathy created by the dominant propaganda, and we were to get millions of people in the streets across Canada, if our elites were truly threatened, they would simply turn the guns on us. If things got that bad that we could get millions into the streets, the elites would have been simultaneously getting thousands of assholes onside with paid positions as informants and spies, the police would be staffed by people who hate and loathe the poor, and the loathsome brutality of the Toronto G-20 would be magnified a hundred-fold. Finally, the military, fed a steady drum-beat of anti-democratic sentiment (going on now I'll bet as their officers explain that dissent against the occupation of Afghanistan is the equivalent of spitting in their faces and wishing for their deaths) would turn their guns on us with the same efficiency of the Burmese military.
We need street protests, speeches. We need an activist oppositional newsmedia. We need a coherent theory of political-economic democracy. We need a courageous and militant political party. We need a courageous and militant protest movement. And we need to think seriously of getting all these things to work in the face of a capitalist elite that suffers no moral qualms over employing DEATH SQUADS to destroy opposition to a system that perpetuates massive inequality.
It's a huge job.
But watching these people fighting for democracy also made me depressed, knowing how corporate-capitalism has rendered democracy in the "advanced" countries into a revolting farce (with the current absolute stupidity of the two parties of Wall Street in the USA showing the absolute depths that pure capitalist culture can drag a political culture down to).
As well, watching the movie made me think about the futility of traditional tactics of pro-democracy movements, both in the world's dictatorships and in the nominal democracies. You see, in the film, the dictatorship doubles the price fuel, which effectively doubled the price of many necessities (bus fares, food, cooking oil, etc.,) and this sparks massive discontent. The dissent is muted however because the dictatorship has thousands upon thousands of spies and informants everywhere and if one is heard criticizing the regime it could lead to imprisonment and torture. Over a couple of days, first a single protester, then a small group of protesters, stage anti-government demonstrations in Rangoon's market, which are quickly smashed. But then, Buddhist monks march to protest the economic policies and the suppression of democracy and the government is temporarily confused. The people are devoutly Buddhist and monks aren't supposed to be touched. For four days the monks march and more and more people join them, and I could imagine the generals arguing whether to let them march and let the movement peter-out, or whether to crush them before the protests turn into a whirlwind that can't be controlled.
In the end, the monks are attacked in the night and only a few manage to make it out to the next day's protests which are led mostly by students. But against the students the government has no compunction about firing live ammunition and the protests are destroyed. And the thirty-year dictatorship survives to oppress for another year or decade or whatever. The VJ's, by smuggling out the images of the protests help tell the world about this democracy movement, the weakness of the regime, and the violence of the authorities.
It's depressing to watch. Both because the protests are crushed but also because of the wider reality. At certain points in the movie, these people trapped in this horrible situation wonder if the rest of the world cares about what's happening in Burma. I could tell them that people do care, just like they care about Darfur, and Haiti, and Pakistan, and everywhere. The problem is that people's knowledge about what to do is hampered by ignorance as to how the world works and ignorance about the culpability and evil of their own governments. At one point in the film, the importance of the VJ's work is shown by a clip of the embarrassingly stupid bush II stumbling through a statement about the horrible oppression of the Burmese dictatorship! To the sane minority in the world, listening to a moronic war criminal exercising his ginormous hypocrisy muscles is painful in the extreme, but far too many millions of people saw him as the "leader of the free world" the "world's greatest democracy" and they expect that the USA will right wrongs and defend the weak anywhere and wonder why it doesn't.
Finally, what I've been saying for quite a while as "thwap," ... we really don't know how to respond to this evil. In Burma, they marched and the shouted, until they were attacked, imprisoned, or mowed-down in the streets, upon which they stopped marching and shouting. Here in Canada, where our masters have the inconvenience of our already possessing certain political and civil rights, work mightily to nullify these rights. They have ENTIRELY SUCCESSFULLY engineered a transfer of wealth from the vast majority to a tiny minority and through propaganda and outright lies have managed to make the middle-levels blame the poorest and the weakest for their problems. In this process, the lies and propaganda and the POWER of the capitalist elites have even served to make left-wing politicians move steadily rightward as their own thinkers come to see the failed neo-liberal consensus as the only option.
The small minority of people who actively protest are marginalized, demonized, attacked and their civil rights are routinely violated, and the general public yawns in indifference at this and at wholesale shredding of the democratic process and the rule of law. But even this small minority of people who know better than most can't seem to shake the delusion that we can change our evil elites by marching and shouting. If only there are enough of us marching and shouting, things will change.
No. The situation in Burma shows that IF we were to somehow miraculously break through the barriers of delusion and apathy created by the dominant propaganda, and we were to get millions of people in the streets across Canada, if our elites were truly threatened, they would simply turn the guns on us. If things got that bad that we could get millions into the streets, the elites would have been simultaneously getting thousands of assholes onside with paid positions as informants and spies, the police would be staffed by people who hate and loathe the poor, and the loathsome brutality of the Toronto G-20 would be magnified a hundred-fold. Finally, the military, fed a steady drum-beat of anti-democratic sentiment (going on now I'll bet as their officers explain that dissent against the occupation of Afghanistan is the equivalent of spitting in their faces and wishing for their deaths) would turn their guns on us with the same efficiency of the Burmese military.
We need street protests, speeches. We need an activist oppositional newsmedia. We need a coherent theory of political-economic democracy. We need a courageous and militant political party. We need a courageous and militant protest movement. And we need to think seriously of getting all these things to work in the face of a capitalist elite that suffers no moral qualms over employing DEATH SQUADS to destroy opposition to a system that perpetuates massive inequality.
It's a huge job.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Canadians are not revolutionaries
Most of us are still far too comfortable. Even those of us who know that the system is evil and doomed don't feel the dagger in our side telling us it's do or die. We feel that we can wait, or that, given the difficulties of the task (revolutions are messy, uncertain affairs) we have to wait, for other necessary conditions to appear.
But the fact of the matter is that we're not doing enough now, and we are certainly doing far too much useless bitching about how flawed the system is and not enough thinking about how, given the reality that Canadians aren't going to revolt, how we are going to devise a non-violent, non-revolutionary revolution.
Alas, alack! So many "progressives" who at least recognize the problems, are STILL, after all this time, willing to waste their energy defending and advancing the Liberal Party of Canada (that destroyed the welfare state during the 1990s, that pillaged the EI program, that overthrew the democratically elected government of Haiti, that is led by men (Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae) and was led by men (Paul Martin, John Manley) who would have taken us into Iraq. Who did take us into Afghanistan. The fact that John Manley went on to become the president of the elitist, anti-democratic, neo-liberal snake-oil peddling Canadian Council of Chief Executives, doesn't seem to register with such people. They'll even join their US-American liberal allies by defending the Wall Street servant, the murderous, psychopathic, lying Barack Obama against his critics.
For a guy who thinks the NDP is the best option of a bad lot, the reality that people who accept the premises of the problem still think the Liberals are even an option is a depressing thing indeed.
I have my own prescriptions, and I've mentioned them before, but I'd be interested to know what other people recommend given the circumstances. Besides bitching about things on the internet, attending a useless rally, and voting for the likeliest left-political option, ... what can we do to effect genuine change?
But the fact of the matter is that we're not doing enough now, and we are certainly doing far too much useless bitching about how flawed the system is and not enough thinking about how, given the reality that Canadians aren't going to revolt, how we are going to devise a non-violent, non-revolutionary revolution.
Alas, alack! So many "progressives" who at least recognize the problems, are STILL, after all this time, willing to waste their energy defending and advancing the Liberal Party of Canada (that destroyed the welfare state during the 1990s, that pillaged the EI program, that overthrew the democratically elected government of Haiti, that is led by men (Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae) and was led by men (Paul Martin, John Manley) who would have taken us into Iraq. Who did take us into Afghanistan. The fact that John Manley went on to become the president of the elitist, anti-democratic, neo-liberal snake-oil peddling Canadian Council of Chief Executives, doesn't seem to register with such people. They'll even join their US-American liberal allies by defending the Wall Street servant, the murderous, psychopathic, lying Barack Obama against his critics.
For a guy who thinks the NDP is the best option of a bad lot, the reality that people who accept the premises of the problem still think the Liberals are even an option is a depressing thing indeed.
I have my own prescriptions, and I've mentioned them before, but I'd be interested to know what other people recommend given the circumstances. Besides bitching about things on the internet, attending a useless rally, and voting for the likeliest left-political option, ... what can we do to effect genuine change?
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
High Levels of Unemployment is a Bad Thing
short n' simple:
Why should governments care, above all else, about keeping unemployment down and ensuring that the greatest number of people get a fair share of the economic pie? Because if you don't, bad things happen.There.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Inside the Mind of a Rob Ford Supporter
Rob Ford is currently the front-runner in the race to be Toronto's mayor. He's apparently a stupid, oafish, incompetent dunce. The Toronto Sun is in love with his fat ass and fellates him on a daily basis. For them, it's a contest between stereotypical downtown lefty elitists and respectable salt of the earth suburban folks and the latter side is winning.
For the Sun's gang of con-men, assholes, and complete morons, the irritation and exasperation of downtown lefty elitists is highly amusing. Whatever gets them riled up is great for the Sun and its readers. What they can't seem to grasp is that intelligent, progressive people have good reason to be angry at the thought of mass stupidity imposing yet another incompetent, evil government upon them, and the extent of this mass stupidity is frustrating. I mean, what? We're supposed to be indifferent to a drunken clod like Ford running Canada's largest city the same way the other heroes of the stupid voters' bloc, Mike Harris in Ontario, stephen (accessory to child rape in Afghanistan) harper in Canada, or bush II in the USA, did?
You wonder what goes through the brains of such nitwits:
"Tee-hee! It drives the lefties NUTS when we vote for so-called 'morons' like Rob Ford!"
"Tee-hee! It drives the other tenants NUTS when I set fire to the building!"
"Tee-hee! My wife HATES it when I take the kids for a drive when I'm drunk out of my mind!"
Tee-hee indeed.
For the Sun's gang of con-men, assholes, and complete morons, the irritation and exasperation of downtown lefty elitists is highly amusing. Whatever gets them riled up is great for the Sun and its readers. What they can't seem to grasp is that intelligent, progressive people have good reason to be angry at the thought of mass stupidity imposing yet another incompetent, evil government upon them, and the extent of this mass stupidity is frustrating. I mean, what? We're supposed to be indifferent to a drunken clod like Ford running Canada's largest city the same way the other heroes of the stupid voters' bloc, Mike Harris in Ontario, stephen (accessory to child rape in Afghanistan) harper in Canada, or bush II in the USA, did?
You wonder what goes through the brains of such nitwits:
"Tee-hee! It drives the lefties NUTS when we vote for so-called 'morons' like Rob Ford!"
"Tee-hee! It drives the other tenants NUTS when I set fire to the building!"
"Tee-hee! My wife HATES it when I take the kids for a drive when I'm drunk out of my mind!"
Tee-hee indeed.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Winston Churchill & Spider Bites
Just some random stuff that i thought i'd share: The first involves a dream i had recently where Winston Churchill put in an appearance of sorts. As a boy, i grew up on the romantic notion of Churchill leading the mother-country democracy Britain standing alone with its fellow democratic former colonies, against the menace of Nazi tyranny, before being joined by the other great democracy, the USA to save the world. Now, my thinking is more reflected by the perspectives mentioned in this Glenn Greenwald post.
Be that as it may, i was dreaming that i was attending an important ceremony of some sort at a very old school, and that Winston Churchill was presiding over things. Churchill just had to sit there and hold a mace or something, he didn't have to talk, which turned out to be a good thing as I found out later when he joined my party at our table after the ceremony was over. You see, Churchill has been dead for about fifty years now and in order to get him to preside over the ceremony they had to reanimate his corpse. And while he looked a presentable figure sitting in his chair at the dais at the front of the room, it was obvious that his higher functions had been negatively impacted by time and events. It was obvious that he was brain-damaged. He looked a little sickly and I was told he would start looking worse over the next couple of days before he finally conked-out again. More, while he responded to stimuli (being nudged, being spoken to) it wasn't clear that he at all understood what was going on. All in all I found the experience a little macabre and unsettling.
As for the spider bites, ... well, I got on the bus with my little boy, and at the back there were two beautiful little school age white girls, giving their Filipino nanny a hard time. When they appeared to start getting completely out of hand I said something to the effect of backing up the nanny's words to try to help. I worried that I was either going to scare them and maybe make them cry, or that I was just rudely interfering. But, happily, it worked and they calmed down a little bit. Then they started poking their hands into the grate covering the bus's air-conditioner/heater thing and the nanny told them to stop, they might get hurt. Again they weren't listening so again i took a chance and said "Yeah. There might be a bear, or a raccoon, or a squirrel in there that could bite your fingers. You wouldn't want that to happen would you?"
The little girl smiled, while taking her hand away and then looked at the grate, and said: "There's no animals in there! It's just dark!" I said, "Yes. Raccoons and creatures like that like the dark." The little girl asked "Are there spiders in there?" I said, "Sure! Spiders, bugs, ... they could bite you too." The little girl shouted for the whole bus: "A spider bit me on my PRIVATE!" I thought to myself, "Okay, ... I'm done." She shouted "That's how I got my birth-mark!" I didn't want to know any more. But apparently it happened when the family had gone camping once.
Be that as it may, i was dreaming that i was attending an important ceremony of some sort at a very old school, and that Winston Churchill was presiding over things. Churchill just had to sit there and hold a mace or something, he didn't have to talk, which turned out to be a good thing as I found out later when he joined my party at our table after the ceremony was over. You see, Churchill has been dead for about fifty years now and in order to get him to preside over the ceremony they had to reanimate his corpse. And while he looked a presentable figure sitting in his chair at the dais at the front of the room, it was obvious that his higher functions had been negatively impacted by time and events. It was obvious that he was brain-damaged. He looked a little sickly and I was told he would start looking worse over the next couple of days before he finally conked-out again. More, while he responded to stimuli (being nudged, being spoken to) it wasn't clear that he at all understood what was going on. All in all I found the experience a little macabre and unsettling.
As for the spider bites, ... well, I got on the bus with my little boy, and at the back there were two beautiful little school age white girls, giving their Filipino nanny a hard time. When they appeared to start getting completely out of hand I said something to the effect of backing up the nanny's words to try to help. I worried that I was either going to scare them and maybe make them cry, or that I was just rudely interfering. But, happily, it worked and they calmed down a little bit. Then they started poking their hands into the grate covering the bus's air-conditioner/heater thing and the nanny told them to stop, they might get hurt. Again they weren't listening so again i took a chance and said "Yeah. There might be a bear, or a raccoon, or a squirrel in there that could bite your fingers. You wouldn't want that to happen would you?"
The little girl smiled, while taking her hand away and then looked at the grate, and said: "There's no animals in there! It's just dark!" I said, "Yes. Raccoons and creatures like that like the dark." The little girl asked "Are there spiders in there?" I said, "Sure! Spiders, bugs, ... they could bite you too." The little girl shouted for the whole bus: "A spider bit me on my PRIVATE!" I thought to myself, "Okay, ... I'm done." She shouted "That's how I got my birth-mark!" I didn't want to know any more. But apparently it happened when the family had gone camping once.
Thoughts on Ezra Levant, Kory Nyuk,Hyuk, and etc.,
When it comes to sheer brain power, I'd match up our homegrown Canadian right-wing shit-heads against the sputtering, brainless, scumbags of the USA, any day.
O'Reilly or Coulter or Beck or Hannity or Kristol vs. Levant, Frum, Coren, DiManno? They're all so intellectually insignificant that even an electron microscope would be unable to help discern the difference in stupid between them.
But the perhaps mortally wounding birth pangs of Sun TV, wherein shitty lawyer and political hack Ezra Levant has gotten the Sun chain sued by BILLIONAIRE financial shark George Soros
(note to Levant: it's generally never a good idea to cast aspersions about billionaires and their relationships with their mothers ... you stupid, stupid, dumb-fuck!) and the idiotic shenanigans of Sun TV's would-be founder (somebody has been typing a bunch of fake names onto a public petition all from the same computer) has forced him to resign, make it look like the USA's idiots are smarter than our idiots.
But unvarnished, heartfelt Canuck patriotism compels me to stand up in defence of our national brethren and argue that our right-wing, wing-nut welfare recipients have just as many neurons spinning around their skulls as the Yankees do. What they don't have, I guess I'm happy to say, is the same amount of legal brains that the US-American right can afford. Good lawyers cost money and Canada's right-wing has a smaller market, both proportionately and absolutely, than Glenn Beck does. Which means they have smaller, less competent legal teams. I mean, what was Kory NyukHyuk supposed to do for legal advice before he tampers with an online petition? Ask shitty lawyer Ezra Levant?
Kory: "Ezra, is it illegal to sabotage a petition in Canada?"
Ezra: "How the fuck should I know? Don't interrupt my fantasies about Stockwell Day's butt-crack sweat!!!"
Kory: "Oh Christ Ezra! Now I'm not going to get any work done today! (Pant! Moan!)"
Note the preceding was a fictional work of satire. Any similarities to persons living or dead is unintended and purely coincidental.
Final Observation: Ya gotta love that last line from my quote from the Globe n' Mail:
O'Reilly or Coulter or Beck or Hannity or Kristol vs. Levant, Frum, Coren, DiManno? They're all so intellectually insignificant that even an electron microscope would be unable to help discern the difference in stupid between them.
But the perhaps mortally wounding birth pangs of Sun TV, wherein shitty lawyer and political hack Ezra Levant has gotten the Sun chain sued by BILLIONAIRE financial shark George Soros
In the piece, which has since been removed from Sun chain news websites, Mr. Levant offered his opinion of how Mr. Soros, a Hungarian Jew born in 1930, survived the Nazis.
Mr. Vachon said Sun Media was notified of Mr. Soros’s reaction earlier this week.
“It made false, defamatory and offensive statements and as a result Mr. Soros has notified the relevant parties of his intent to sue,” he said.
“What is of concern in the article are the false assertions that Mr. Levant makes regarding George Soros’s conduct as a 13-year-old child in Nazi-occupied Hungary.”
He accused Mr. Levant of distorting statements made by Mr. Soros in past interviews.
Mr. Levant declined comment Thursday.
(note to Levant: it's generally never a good idea to cast aspersions about billionaires and their relationships with their mothers ... you stupid, stupid, dumb-fuck!) and the idiotic shenanigans of Sun TV's would-be founder (somebody has been typing a bunch of fake names onto a public petition all from the same computer) has forced him to resign, make it look like the USA's idiots are smarter than our idiots.
But unvarnished, heartfelt Canuck patriotism compels me to stand up in defence of our national brethren and argue that our right-wing, wing-nut welfare recipients have just as many neurons spinning around their skulls as the Yankees do. What they don't have, I guess I'm happy to say, is the same amount of legal brains that the US-American right can afford. Good lawyers cost money and Canada's right-wing has a smaller market, both proportionately and absolutely, than Glenn Beck does. Which means they have smaller, less competent legal teams. I mean, what was Kory NyukHyuk supposed to do for legal advice before he tampers with an online petition? Ask shitty lawyer Ezra Levant?
Kory: "Ezra, is it illegal to sabotage a petition in Canada?"
Ezra: "How the fuck should I know? Don't interrupt my fantasies about Stockwell Day's butt-crack sweat!!!"
Kory: "Oh Christ Ezra! Now I'm not going to get any work done today! (Pant! Moan!)"
Note the preceding was a fictional work of satire. Any similarities to persons living or dead is unintended and purely coincidental.
Final Observation: Ya gotta love that last line from my quote from the Globe n' Mail:
Mr. Levant declined comment Thursday.The idea of that loud-mouthed, fat-assed, stupid fuck refusing to bray like the jackass he is in front of a microphone is truly manna from Heaven! What's a matter Ezra? Afraid you'll say something STUPID that could get you SUED by an activist BILLIONAIRE?? Little late to be worrying about that, I'd say! You stupid fuck.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Another Example of Us versus Them
Check it:
"This little light of mine, ... I'm gonna let it shine!" We're fucked, aren't we?
One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.
"This little light of mine, ... I'm gonna let it shine!" We're fucked, aren't we?
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
What Dawg Said ...
About criticisms of the Sun newspaper chain's readership.
Oh yeah, and what Montreal Simon said too.
It's a continuation of a theme.
Oh yeah, and what Montreal Simon said too.
It's a continuation of a theme.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Right-wingers being called "stupid"
So the Toronto Sun has a columnist called Joe Wormington (or something like that). Recently, all the "leftists" on Toronto City Council expressed sentiments to the effect that if the absolute moron Rob Ford won the race for Mayor that they'd simply block his every move. There was also some talk about ignorant suburbanites which wasn't entirely unfair because the source of Ford's support comes from the suburbs, and it's also true that many suburbanites hate the cities, foolishly believing that their own car-dependent, land-wasting, class stratified fantasy lands are the model for the world. What I'm getting at here is that while I don't write-off everyone in the suburbs as shallow, ignorant imbeciles, I also think that people who live in the central parts of our urban areas are justified in criticizing areas that support demonstrably STUPID political candidates and that people who engage in blanket condemnations of other people ("effete, urban, latte-sipping, elitist, degenerate, criminal, etc.," are all tossed at downtowners from some suburbanites) ought not to whine so much when they themselves are criticized.
But the point of this post is to talk about Wormington's own whining on this subject. He trashed the "left" for calling Ford's supporters stupid and for their vowing to render him a powerless figurehead due to his and his supporters' stupidity. The thing was, Wormington was really laying it on thick with the outrage and towards the middle of his mewling you really got a sense that he was really angry and hurt about being called stupid.
This seems to demonstrate the difference between right-wingers and progressives. For the most part, right-wingers ARE stupid, and deep down they know it and it frustrates them. So, when they're called stupid by the left, their frustrations boil over into raving, spittle-flecked tirades of wounded self-pity. Progressives, on the other hand, are not as stupid, as a group, as right-wingers are. When progressives are called stupid by right-wingers, whether it be the contemptible bigots and fuck-ups of the Blogging Tories or the lying, deluded shit-heads of the Toronto Sun's editorial committee, the usual response is a bemused smirk, or, after a series of particularly disastrous policies and their terrible results, (say with Mike Harris's misrule of Ontario or bush II's stepping in one pile of his own shit after another) with a degree of justified frustration that we even have to contend with these morons.
I had a conversation on EnMasse once, wherein some stupid person told me that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar and that calling people stupid was bad tactics (after which he referred to my brain as a sewer), but I disagree. Calling these stupid people stupid is a good thing, because for one thing, it's true, and secondly, it launches them into these paroxysms of blind, self-pitying rage, and distracts them from coming up with even more destructive policies because they're so busy furiously typing their rage or screaming like the idiots they are at their protest rallies.
But the point of this post is to talk about Wormington's own whining on this subject. He trashed the "left" for calling Ford's supporters stupid and for their vowing to render him a powerless figurehead due to his and his supporters' stupidity. The thing was, Wormington was really laying it on thick with the outrage and towards the middle of his mewling you really got a sense that he was really angry and hurt about being called stupid.
This seems to demonstrate the difference between right-wingers and progressives. For the most part, right-wingers ARE stupid, and deep down they know it and it frustrates them. So, when they're called stupid by the left, their frustrations boil over into raving, spittle-flecked tirades of wounded self-pity. Progressives, on the other hand, are not as stupid, as a group, as right-wingers are. When progressives are called stupid by right-wingers, whether it be the contemptible bigots and fuck-ups of the Blogging Tories or the lying, deluded shit-heads of the Toronto Sun's editorial committee, the usual response is a bemused smirk, or, after a series of particularly disastrous policies and their terrible results, (say with Mike Harris's misrule of Ontario or bush II's stepping in one pile of his own shit after another) with a degree of justified frustration that we even have to contend with these morons.
I had a conversation on EnMasse once, wherein some stupid person told me that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar and that calling people stupid was bad tactics (after which he referred to my brain as a sewer), but I disagree. Calling these stupid people stupid is a good thing, because for one thing, it's true, and secondly, it launches them into these paroxysms of blind, self-pitying rage, and distracts them from coming up with even more destructive policies because they're so busy furiously typing their rage or screaming like the idiots they are at their protest rallies.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
OH-HA-HA! Ezra Levant writes a book about the Tar Sands!
So I was at the "Golden Griddle" for breakfast this morning and they had some copies of today's Toronto Sun lying around I was able to read their featured excerpt from shitty lawyer Ezra Levant's unimportant new book Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands, which they're printing because they're a bunch of stupid, right-wing hacks for whom such propagandistic drivel is the soul name of the game.
I was pretty sure that Levant, being the shitty lawyer and talentless idiot that he is, would have no real defence of Canada's indefensible ecological catastrophe, the biggest single emittor of greenhouse gases in all the world, and reading the two pages of shit the Sun was pushing out confirmed my susupicions entirely.
Apparently the oil sands are good because Canada is good and most other oil producing nations are bad. Using logic and analysis worthy of "Knight Rider" or "The A-Team" or some other bit of childish pap, Levant ignores the main criticism of the oil sands and argues instead that the choice is the USA buying its oil from Canada or from some human-rights abusers in Saudi Arabia or from ("gasp!") the Venezuela of dictatorial "socialist strongman" Hugo Chavez.
Being an imbecile, Levant forgets that most of the oil-exporting nations have thuggish, dictatorial governments because those are the governments that the USA wants them to have. It's not like the USA reluctantly buys its oil from the repugnant Saudi regime. The US government actively supports and protects these corrupt psychopaths.
So, in the end, Levant's argument fails on its own grounds because it's a useless piece of shit that avoids the real issues, and it then turns out to be even more laughably stupid because it's premises are uninvestigated delusions. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ezra Levant's entire career is a scathing indictment of Canada's political culture. Until we live in a world where insane dumb-fucks like Levant are completely and totally incapable of supporting themselves with their ignorant ravings, we are dangerously compromised and at risk of perishing as a species.
It is so surprisingly bad that one would think that Levant spent two-thirds of the time he was supposed to be writing the book reaching under his belly to jerk himself off to his fantasies about Stockwell Day.
I was pretty sure that Levant, being the shitty lawyer and talentless idiot that he is, would have no real defence of Canada's indefensible ecological catastrophe, the biggest single emittor of greenhouse gases in all the world, and reading the two pages of shit the Sun was pushing out confirmed my susupicions entirely.
Apparently the oil sands are good because Canada is good and most other oil producing nations are bad. Using logic and analysis worthy of "Knight Rider" or "The A-Team" or some other bit of childish pap, Levant ignores the main criticism of the oil sands and argues instead that the choice is the USA buying its oil from Canada or from some human-rights abusers in Saudi Arabia or from ("gasp!") the Venezuela of dictatorial "socialist strongman" Hugo Chavez.
Being an imbecile, Levant forgets that most of the oil-exporting nations have thuggish, dictatorial governments because those are the governments that the USA wants them to have. It's not like the USA reluctantly buys its oil from the repugnant Saudi regime. The US government actively supports and protects these corrupt psychopaths.
So, in the end, Levant's argument fails on its own grounds because it's a useless piece of shit that avoids the real issues, and it then turns out to be even more laughably stupid because it's premises are uninvestigated delusions. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ezra Levant's entire career is a scathing indictment of Canada's political culture. Until we live in a world where insane dumb-fucks like Levant are completely and totally incapable of supporting themselves with their ignorant ravings, we are dangerously compromised and at risk of perishing as a species.
It is so surprisingly bad that one would think that Levant spent two-thirds of the time he was supposed to be writing the book reaching under his belly to jerk himself off to his fantasies about Stockwell Day.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Belated Labour Day Reflections
This past Labour Day, the Microsoft Network got the highly original, provocative idea to question whether or not labour unions are obsolete. They spoke with some union-busting scum-bag to see what he thought about the matter and the asshole opined thusly:
Just thought I'd share.
"Unions are like parasites - good parasites are the ones that do not kill theWhich is pretty fuckin' rich. What the stupid fuck has obviously missed is that it's the present batch of off-shoring, down-sizing, wealth-squeezing oligarchs who are the parasites. And these parasites have forgotten that unless there are markets for their goods, there's no profit in doing anything which means that there's nothing to invest in besides increasingly desperate hopes and dreams and moonshine. Which is the root cause of the last real-estate/financial sector crisis and the present state of stagnation and insecurity in the world economy.
host. Unions need employers and sometimes they forget that,"
Just thought I'd share.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Tony Blair and Glenn Beck
There's a nauseating combo 'eh? But this post is just about two quick separate reflections on these two assholes.
About Tony Blair, I'd like to review Heather Mallick's review of Tony Blair's latest exercise in self-pity and hypocrisy, My Journey:
About Tony Blair, I'd like to review Heather Mallick's review of Tony Blair's latest exercise in self-pity and hypocrisy, My Journey:
Andrew Rawnsley, whose recent The End of the Party about the brief life of New Labour is one of the best political books of this decade, sums it up: Blair was “a sincere deceiver. He told the truth about what he believed; he lied about the strength of the evidence for that belief.”
...
He left office at a level of unpopularity that would shake a wiser man, but he’s as urgent in his claims of sincerity as he ever was.It brings to mind his verbal tic as PM, “I really believe,” which made people wonder why he had to constantly remind them that he wasn’t pretending. He really, really believed, still does.
I've noticed somewhere or other on the intertubes some mentioning of the whole issue of how there are structural causes for the imperialism, theft, and cruelty that our elites indulge in and that these things can't be addressed by attacking the moral failings of individual politicians. This is true enough, but I want to say that these policies ARE imposed by human individuals and understanding how individuals can swallow these delusions and why is also important for understanding how to fix the system.
Now, about Glenn Beck: Given the fact that the stupid tea-baggers have a major cable news network promoting them 24-hours a day, seven days a week, and that there's been more ink spilled and bandwidth filled discussing these idiots over the past year than there's been on the anti-Iraq and Afghanistan wars movements for the past ten years, it's noteworthy that Beck's gathering of imbeciles in Washington only attracted 100,000 people. (The actual count was 87,000 which is well short of even 100,000.) In a country of 300 million people, with all the corporate support any group could hope to ask for, Glenn Beck was only able to scrounge together less people than the Ontario labour movement could against Mike Harris.
Isn't that more than enough evidence that we should pull the plug on the idea of continuing to waste energy covering this movement. 80 percent of the USA loathes Sarah Palin. She can do all she wants to win the Repug nomination, if she wins, she'll lose, because as debased as US American politics is under oligarchic capitalism, the people are too smart to vote for that shit-head or to fall under the sway of Beck's crazed, incoherent generalities. Sure, they represent a frightening lower bar for mainstream politics, but leave them to the full-time anti-fascist writers to keep tabs on them. They're not much more viable than Canada's "Heritage Front."
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Gun Registry and the NDP
So the harpercons have decided to use a private members bill to accomplish one of their chief aims, which is to kill the Liberals' gun registry. The NDP has a tradition of not whipping votes on private members bills and several NDP MPs representing rural ridings want to vote their constituents' wishes and agree to kill the gun registry.
I find this a very tricky subject. I don't like guns and for the most part I don't think that I like gun enthusiasts. That having been said, I don't like some of the sweeping powers and invasions of privacy that go along with the gun registry. I don't believe that an armed population can keep our massively-armed states in line but I do like to limit the scale and scope of the authorities' monopoly on the tools of violence. Furthermore, for the most part, Canada's gun owners are responsible people. (That was one of the arguments in "Bowling for Columbine" by the way. Michael Moore clearly shows that Canadians own more guns per capita than do USians, but our gun-related crime rates are far lower.)
I've been recently been reading editorials and surfing through various progressive bloggers' posts about the subject and a far chunk of these don't argue the case for the registry very well. There are numerous references to police association reports where they praise the long-gun registry to the skies but I've not read much in-depth summaries of these reports and remain suspicious of police enthusiasm for more tools to monitor and control people. There are arguments about gun violence against women but they're generally constructed so as to paint anyone opposed to the gun registry as being automatically in favour of women being killed by their partners, which is the same as saying that anyone who doesn't support lowering the highway speed limit to 20 kmph as wanting to have hundreds of thousands of Canadians die needless fiery deaths on our roads every year.
There's a vigourous debate going on here at EnMasse on the subject.
Some people have argued against Layton whipping the vote from the perspective of encouraging democracy within Parliament and how MPs should represent their constituents' first and that the "leadership" Ignatieff is showing is actually dictatorial.
These are all interesting questions and positions. And I'm really too lazy to provide all the links or to construct my first real post in a while so as to make it coherent. Bear with me, I'm on a train! Anyhooo, to get to the point of it, I think the NDP should vote against this motion. Without having found the time to read the studies, some summaries have shown that the long-gun registry has had a significant effect on lowering gun violence and violence against women. For that reason, this bill to simply scrap the long-gun registry should be rejected.
The NDP apparently proposed different legislation that would keep the long-gun registry but address the concerns of rural long-gun owners and privacy advocates but people argued why this wasn't proposed when the bill went to committee. I'm going to look at the committee report and see what happened.
But if the bill is voted down there's no reason why the NDP can't argue that they had to reject this irrepsonsible, all or nothing bill while remaining sincere that they want to bring forward some responsible legislation that deals with the valid concerns of long-gun owners (rural and urban) AND urban voters and womens' rights activists and other pro-registry voters.
Specious argument: The long-gun registry cost two-billion dollars, therefore we should scrap it. I believe in the debates at second-reading, an MP from the Bloc Quebecois described this logic as "my house cost me much more to build than I expected. I think I'll burn it down."
There's some good debate at that link, I suggest anyone who hasn't read it to check it out. Well, the snack cart is coming and I don't know what else to say on the subject at the moment anyway.
I find this a very tricky subject. I don't like guns and for the most part I don't think that I like gun enthusiasts. That having been said, I don't like some of the sweeping powers and invasions of privacy that go along with the gun registry. I don't believe that an armed population can keep our massively-armed states in line but I do like to limit the scale and scope of the authorities' monopoly on the tools of violence. Furthermore, for the most part, Canada's gun owners are responsible people. (That was one of the arguments in "Bowling for Columbine" by the way. Michael Moore clearly shows that Canadians own more guns per capita than do USians, but our gun-related crime rates are far lower.)
I've been recently been reading editorials and surfing through various progressive bloggers' posts about the subject and a far chunk of these don't argue the case for the registry very well. There are numerous references to police association reports where they praise the long-gun registry to the skies but I've not read much in-depth summaries of these reports and remain suspicious of police enthusiasm for more tools to monitor and control people. There are arguments about gun violence against women but they're generally constructed so as to paint anyone opposed to the gun registry as being automatically in favour of women being killed by their partners, which is the same as saying that anyone who doesn't support lowering the highway speed limit to 20 kmph as wanting to have hundreds of thousands of Canadians die needless fiery deaths on our roads every year.
There's a vigourous debate going on here at EnMasse on the subject.
Some people have argued against Layton whipping the vote from the perspective of encouraging democracy within Parliament and how MPs should represent their constituents' first and that the "leadership" Ignatieff is showing is actually dictatorial.
These are all interesting questions and positions. And I'm really too lazy to provide all the links or to construct my first real post in a while so as to make it coherent. Bear with me, I'm on a train! Anyhooo, to get to the point of it, I think the NDP should vote against this motion. Without having found the time to read the studies, some summaries have shown that the long-gun registry has had a significant effect on lowering gun violence and violence against women. For that reason, this bill to simply scrap the long-gun registry should be rejected.
The NDP apparently proposed different legislation that would keep the long-gun registry but address the concerns of rural long-gun owners and privacy advocates but people argued why this wasn't proposed when the bill went to committee. I'm going to look at the committee report and see what happened.
But if the bill is voted down there's no reason why the NDP can't argue that they had to reject this irrepsonsible, all or nothing bill while remaining sincere that they want to bring forward some responsible legislation that deals with the valid concerns of long-gun owners (rural and urban) AND urban voters and womens' rights activists and other pro-registry voters.
Specious argument: The long-gun registry cost two-billion dollars, therefore we should scrap it. I believe in the debates at second-reading, an MP from the Bloc Quebecois described this logic as "my house cost me much more to build than I expected. I think I'll burn it down."
There's some good debate at that link, I suggest anyone who hasn't read it to check it out. Well, the snack cart is coming and I don't know what else to say on the subject at the moment anyway.
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