I was reading the comments section to this Royson James article, wherein he points out that Ford obviously lied about how he could find a billion dollars worth of "gravy" at City Hall and eliminate it without having to cut services. As a result of his threatened service cuts and library closings, some of the people who voted for Ford feel betrayed.
Obviously, the anonymous comments section was full of nonsense, but a couple of Ford-fellators wrote words to the effect of how the growth of entitlements and government spending has finally reached the crisis point: there's simply no more money to pay for all our demanded ponies and sugar-plums anymore.
I hear this from time to time, and it's an especially common refrain among the US-American right-wing.
But it's complete bullshit.
I've been watching spending and services being cut for decades people, and I've been watching politicians cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations for all that time. But for these guys, it's eternally 1972 and the welfare queens are calling out for, and getting, all the "free stuff" from the hard-working white people.
You don't debate with these people because they're either liars or abominably ignorant.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
More Disgusting Bullshit From Rob "Lying Sack of Shit" Ford
So, it turns out that the lying, cowardly prick is unimpressed with the lack of suggestions coming from the citizenry:
During the interview, which was recorded in the morning or early afternoon, he [Ford] was asked by Cybulski to identify the best suggestion he had heard during the meeting. He responded: “Actually, I haven’t heard anyone wanting to reduce. They just want to keep everything. So I don’t think people understand that if we don’t do anything with the $775 million (budget shortfall), you’re going to be looking at thousands of dollars of property tax increases.”
He added: “I haven’t heard any good suggestions on saving money. I’ve just heard ‘don’t cut this and don’t cut that.’”
That's right you stupid, rancid slab of pork. Do you know why? Because you blurted out over and over and over again that the problem at City Hall was a massive gravy train that wasted (presumably) HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. YOU, and nobody forced you to say this, that you could cut taxes, freeze property taxes, and that there would be NO CUTS, GUARANTEED.
Ford is either a shameless liar or he's dismally stupid. More and more I'm leaning to the former option (obviously).
This is a goddamned farce. The Chretien-Martin comedy duo cut taxes for the wealthy and downloaded spending obligations to the provinces. In Ontario, the shitty diaper-brained Mike Harris downloaded spending obligations to the municipalities and cut taxes for the wealthy.
We need to RAISE TAXES on the wealthy. (For their own sakes, as well as ours, because awash with cash in a stagnant economy, they end up "investing" in fraudulent, speculative, pieces of nonsense which inevitably explode with a stench.) We should RAISE TAXES and SPEND ON PUBLIC SERVICES.
The reason why we don't is because the short-sighted elites saw that the welfare state made frightened, isolated workers into confident, empowered citizens. They don't want to go down that road again, ... but WE DO.
Ford is an errand boy. The least talented member of a wealthy family, he was sent into municipal politics, where his aw-shucks, regular guy shtick resonated with simplistic, ignorant people, and allowed him (campaigning against the sleazy Liberal alternative George Smitherman) to become mayor of Toronto and finish the wrecking job started by Mike Harris.
He's a complete fucking liar who doesn't deserve to be listened to. Every word out of his stupid mouth is either a lie or a brain-fart. He is beneath our respect.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Un-Fuck You Rob Ford
So, the liar, the coward, ... during his insulting marathon communication strategy has decided to lie about his father's legacy, and the legacy of his father's chief, the murderously incompetent Mike Harris, and to obscure their role in impoverishing Toronto and smashing together the discordant communities of downtown Toronto and Etobicoke.
Check it out:
Oh yeah, and put The Toronto Sun among the whining, lazy, cowardly, lying groups of fucks who brought all this upon us and who refuse to come clean about what they're doing and refuse to accept responsibility for the sufferings and misery they've caused.
Check it out:
John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, told the executive council that, rather than a budget-cutting exercise, they are part of a mission to dramatically shrink city government, reduce its workforce and contract out as many services as possible.Typical cowardly dissembling. Harris had a lot to do with the mess we're in now. And Torontonians and Etobicokans should be made to understand that Ford is lying so blatantly because he's trying to hide the fact that he's finishing Harris's work. Harris downloaded services and slashed funding to the municipalities, and then he amalgamated communities to deprive them of the political ability to effectively resist the subsequent need to slash and burn to survive the new reality. Now, fat-head, lying, stupid, pampered son of privilege, Rob Ford charges onto the scene, elected on false premises, elected on complete lies, bullshitting his way to cuts, cuts, cuts, aided and abetted by whining stupid fucks who refuse to admit they were sold a bill of goods that only completely ignorant, deluded people could have fallen for.
"We are being made captive of a Tea Party mentality that is destroying the economy," Cartwright said, referencing Wal-Mart and other employers he said are trying to drive down workers' wages.
"Poverty jobs should not be the goal of the City of Toronto."
He said the current councillors didn't campaign on making layoffs. Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti countered that union jobs were in fact an issue in the election, that on voters' doorsteps he constantly heard about unionized city jobs and the 2009 civic workers' strike that saw garbage piled up in parks.
In response to a question about the wages paid to staff who clean police stations, Cartwright said light duty cleaners earn about $20 an hour and heavy duty cleaners make about $22.
He said the labour council helped convince the provincial government to raise Ontario's minimum wage to $10.25 an hour, but doesn't think it would be right for workers cleaning City of Toronto facilities to make that "poverty wage."
He was one of several deputants who have blamed former Ontario premier Mike Harris for downloading responsibilities onto municipalities and helping put Toronto in an annual deficit position.
"We've seen this movie before. It was called the Common Sense Revolution and it didn't end well," said Cartwright, whose council represents 190,000 unionized workers in Toronto.
Mayor Ford, who has refrained from putting questions to any deputants and has made few comments as he chairs the meeting, reacted to the Harris government comparisons.
"I'm surprised they're not blaming Diefenbaker, never mind Harris," Ford said.
His late father, Douglas Ford Sr., was a backbench Conservative MPP when Harris was the Conservative premier.
Oh yeah, and put The Toronto Sun among the whining, lazy, cowardly, lying groups of fucks who brought all this upon us and who refuse to come clean about what they're doing and refuse to accept responsibility for the sufferings and misery they've caused.
Rob Ford's "Core Service Review" Consultations
They're today and I hope the lying, shameless doofus gets an ear full for his bullshit. Him and his stupid asshole brother, and all the other lying dorks who cluster around them hoping to score some post-politics swag and to beat-up on the poor and the weak.
Ford lied. Ford LIED. Ford LIED when he said he could cut fees, freeze taxes, and avoid any service cuts. We knew this at the time, we know it now.
But, typically, Ford is insulting our intelligence by saying he's "finding efficiencies" and not making cuts, and, still more typically, his stupid fans are refusing to admit the obvious truth that Ford is a lying fraud and an obnoxious ass. He's still number one in their books. These people are shameless, stupid liars themselves.
There's no debating with these fools. I'm beginning to think there should be no compromise or acquiescence with them at all.
Ford lied. Ford LIED. Ford LIED when he said he could cut fees, freeze taxes, and avoid any service cuts. We knew this at the time, we know it now.
But, typically, Ford is insulting our intelligence by saying he's "finding efficiencies" and not making cuts, and, still more typically, his stupid fans are refusing to admit the obvious truth that Ford is a lying fraud and an obnoxious ass. He's still number one in their books. These people are shameless, stupid liars themselves.
There's no debating with these fools. I'm beginning to think there should be no compromise or acquiescence with them at all.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
harper: "Majority government allows me to embrace my inner racist!"
So, now the prick (inspired by the tutelage of his senile mentor Tom Flanagan) has decided that the need for pretense is over. They were never conquered. They signed treaties with us. We broke them. We stole their land. In the 1970s, they began to rise up and challenge the illegal status-quo.
Trudeau tried to ignore them.
Mulroney tried to suppress them at Oka but eventually conceded to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which produced far-reaching recommendations (which have been uniformly buried).
Chretien and Martin allowed them to fester in neglect and poverty until the international embarrassment of Kashechewan compelled Martin to sign the Kelowna Accord, laying-out billions of dollars in long-delayed infrastructure spending.
(Liberal zombies will insist that I mention that it was Jack Layton and the NDP who fired the first shot to topple the Martin government. I fail to see the argument against Layton. He was demanding that Martin take serious steps to halt and reverse the creeping privatization of our national health care system. Supposedly, Aboriginal affairs are a passionate issue for Paul Martin, and his commitment to medicare was also steadfast. Curiously though, he endangered Kelowna to avoid having to account for his treatment of public health care. Perhaps he truly cared about neither?)
Regardless, stephen harper first oozed to power with a minority government in the subsequent election and proceeded to abandon the Kelowna Accord (as well as the Martin national daycare plan with the provinces). In fact, the only promises that harper respects are commitments to kill brown people with the US-Americans. I guess getting other people to kill brown people is a "sacred trust" for the cowardly psycho, and very little else.
While he hasn't bothered to pay for clean drinking water on First Nations reserves, harper has come up with very stringent standards for these reserves, without giving them the ability to pay for them. Enter the lawyer-thief Bruce Carson. A "fixer" for the harpercon scum. By driving through the gaping loopholes of harper's laughable "Accountability Act" Carson was able to inform First Nations band councils that if they bought the water treatment systems fronted by his fiance (who is decades younger than him and is apparently cuckolding him), they'll get the money they need.
As if all that sleaze isn't enough, harper has decided to terminate the land claims negotiation process that has been constructed in the face of Aboriginal militancy. He's going to give the First Nations a "take it or leave it" offer and force them to turn to a court system that can only award $250 million a year and which is to be wound-down in ten years time. This means that they can win a maximum of $2.5 billion when there claims are in the tens of billions.
Trudeau tried to ignore them.
Mulroney tried to suppress them at Oka but eventually conceded to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which produced far-reaching recommendations (which have been uniformly buried).
Chretien and Martin allowed them to fester in neglect and poverty until the international embarrassment of Kashechewan compelled Martin to sign the Kelowna Accord, laying-out billions of dollars in long-delayed infrastructure spending.
(Liberal zombies will insist that I mention that it was Jack Layton and the NDP who fired the first shot to topple the Martin government. I fail to see the argument against Layton. He was demanding that Martin take serious steps to halt and reverse the creeping privatization of our national health care system. Supposedly, Aboriginal affairs are a passionate issue for Paul Martin, and his commitment to medicare was also steadfast. Curiously though, he endangered Kelowna to avoid having to account for his treatment of public health care. Perhaps he truly cared about neither?)
Regardless, stephen harper first oozed to power with a minority government in the subsequent election and proceeded to abandon the Kelowna Accord (as well as the Martin national daycare plan with the provinces). In fact, the only promises that harper respects are commitments to kill brown people with the US-Americans. I guess getting other people to kill brown people is a "sacred trust" for the cowardly psycho, and very little else.
While he hasn't bothered to pay for clean drinking water on First Nations reserves, harper has come up with very stringent standards for these reserves, without giving them the ability to pay for them. Enter the lawyer-thief Bruce Carson. A "fixer" for the harpercon scum. By driving through the gaping loopholes of harper's laughable "Accountability Act" Carson was able to inform First Nations band councils that if they bought the water treatment systems fronted by his fiance (who is decades younger than him and is apparently cuckolding him), they'll get the money they need.
As if all that sleaze isn't enough, harper has decided to terminate the land claims negotiation process that has been constructed in the face of Aboriginal militancy. He's going to give the First Nations a "take it or leave it" offer and force them to turn to a court system that can only award $250 million a year and which is to be wound-down in ten years time. This means that they can win a maximum of $2.5 billion when there claims are in the tens of billions.
“They [the First Nations] have invested a great deal of time — in some cases, decades — getting this far in the process. And they have been promised justice. The Prime Minister himself in 2007 announced a policy called ‘Justice At Last’, which many of us are now calling ‘Just For Laughs’ in honour of the comedy program. The promises that the Prime Minister made in the summer three or four years ago are being dishonoured. And First Nations are very angry,” he said. “I can tell you that the claims community, the professionals and the First Nations who are in claims across the country, are in an uproar and outrage. I’m not going to make any predictions about what may happen, but I will remind– I would remind the federal system that when Justice At Last was announced, it was in response to a Senate committee report called ‘Negotiation or Confrontation: It’s Canada’s Choice.’ And Canada’s pushing First Nations back, away from reconciliation. And as the Senate predicted, it will be some form of confrontation that will be the result. That’s my prediction.”Perhaps this latest outrage could be the catalyst for massive civil disobedience against the anti-democratic harper regime. It's pretty clear that the First Nations peoples, pushed to the wall by over a century of racist colonialism and bullshit government negotiations, aren't going to take this arrogant contempt lying down. Sane and decent non-First Nations people should stand with them. We should stand with them and against the harpercon scum and the whining racist un-Canadian hypocrites who support them.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
No Unions, No Welfare State, No Justice
Used to be that unions (or the threat of unions) could compel employers to pay decently. Government efforts to achieve something approaching full employment, combined with welfare payments (or unemployment insurance) to the unemployed or marginalized, mitigated poverty somewhat.
These government actions were paid for through taxes, proportionately falling upon the wealthiest.
But now, globalization has killed jobs. Union-busting has weakened the ability of many workers to get a living wage. Tax-cuts (mainly benefiting the wealthy) have reduced governments' ability to pay (even more necessary) welfare benefits, or to fund counter-cyclical public works.
It has not been a recipe for success.
These government actions were paid for through taxes, proportionately falling upon the wealthiest.
But now, globalization has killed jobs. Union-busting has weakened the ability of many workers to get a living wage. Tax-cuts (mainly benefiting the wealthy) have reduced governments' ability to pay (even more necessary) welfare benefits, or to fund counter-cyclical public works.
It has not been a recipe for success.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
The Proper Way to Respond to International Tragedies
OH! Somebody did something horrible and killed a bunch of people! I hate that person!
OH! A different group of people did something horrible to another different group of people! What's wrong with the people who did the horrible thing??
OH NO! The group of people who were attacked did something horrible back to the people who hurt them! The world is crazy! Two groups of savages! "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
AGGHHH!!! The Palestinians did something terrible to the Israelis! Kill those sand-nigger death-cult psychos!!!
EEEK! Some terrorist terrorized the USA for no reason whatsoever that I can discern! Kill the psychopathic mother-fucker! He was probably a Muslim anyway!
HMMM. Says here, Canada and the USA have hunter-killer squads murdering suspected Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and sometimes they kill innocent people and make necklaces out of their fingers and ears. Let's wait for more evidence (that won't be forthcoming) before we say ANYTHING about this. The people telling the stories are no doubt Taliban-sympathizers who hate the troops. I've forgotten what we're talking about already.
OH! A different group of people did something horrible to another different group of people! What's wrong with the people who did the horrible thing??
OH NO! The group of people who were attacked did something horrible back to the people who hurt them! The world is crazy! Two groups of savages! "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
AGGHHH!!! The Palestinians did something terrible to the Israelis! Kill those sand-nigger death-cult psychos!!!
EEEK! Some terrorist terrorized the USA for no reason whatsoever that I can discern! Kill the psychopathic mother-fucker! He was probably a Muslim anyway!
HMMM. Says here, Canada and the USA have hunter-killer squads murdering suspected Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and sometimes they kill innocent people and make necklaces out of their fingers and ears. Let's wait for more evidence (that won't be forthcoming) before we say ANYTHING about this. The people telling the stories are no doubt Taliban-sympathizers who hate the troops. I've forgotten what we're talking about already.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Helping the Neighbours ...
My neighbours were trying to build a tree-house for their kids, where they and their friends could play. But they didn't know what they were doing. A few broken bones later, I decided to help.
But then it occurred to me that I was really busy and I didn't want to spend any of my time or money really working on it. Plus, I didn't really know what I was doing.
Long story short, I did a shitty job. Sub-standard materials and brainless architectural engineering and etc., and there've been even more broken bones and concussions.
What I don't get is my neighbours lack of gratitude. What I REALLY don't get is that the assholes think that I'm somehow legally responsible for the accidents that happened after I helped! It's not like there weren't accidents before. Why should I be sued for having attempted to help???
ETA:
I thought I'd leave it for a day before explaining that this is the mindset of Canadians who didn't grasp the danger of getting involved in the US adventure in Afghanistan.
But then it occurred to me that I was really busy and I didn't want to spend any of my time or money really working on it. Plus, I didn't really know what I was doing.
Long story short, I did a shitty job. Sub-standard materials and brainless architectural engineering and etc., and there've been even more broken bones and concussions.
What I don't get is my neighbours lack of gratitude. What I REALLY don't get is that the assholes think that I'm somehow legally responsible for the accidents that happened after I helped! It's not like there weren't accidents before. Why should I be sued for having attempted to help???
ETA:
I thought I'd leave it for a day before explaining that this is the mindset of Canadians who didn't grasp the danger of getting involved in the US adventure in Afghanistan.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A Steady Diet of Garbage
Radio alarm clock wakes 'em up to some spewing hate-fest.
Turn on the television and there's FOXNews telling them that Obama the fascist-socialist is spending them into penury and the only option is to cut taxes for billionaires and slash social security and medicare.
Read a Charles Adler column at the breakfast table. Something about how Christian virtues are needed more than ever.
Got Christie Belchforth's new book about how we should shoot all the fucking Indians.
Syria's got Saddam's WMDs!
Israel's existence is threatened by homemade rockets.
There's $800 million of "gravy" at Toronto City Hall. You just have to pay people to find it for you!
We "won" in Afghanistan.
Global Warming is a hoax. It isn't getting warmer. Or it is, but it's the sun's fault. Climate science has long been a hot-bed of Marxism.
Single mothers on welfare hijacked our democracy. They were too powerful for our politicians to resist. The business lobby was powerless against their political clout, but things started to go our way again in the 1980s.
Nelson Mandela is a terrorist.
We're going to save the world by invading Iran. And then China's next!
Turn on the television and there's FOXNews telling them that Obama the fascist-socialist is spending them into penury and the only option is to cut taxes for billionaires and slash social security and medicare.
Read a Charles Adler column at the breakfast table. Something about how Christian virtues are needed more than ever.
Got Christie Belchforth's new book about how we should shoot all the fucking Indians.
Syria's got Saddam's WMDs!
Israel's existence is threatened by homemade rockets.
There's $800 million of "gravy" at Toronto City Hall. You just have to pay people to find it for you!
We "won" in Afghanistan.
Global Warming is a hoax. It isn't getting warmer. Or it is, but it's the sun's fault. Climate science has long been a hot-bed of Marxism.
Single mothers on welfare hijacked our democracy. They were too powerful for our politicians to resist. The business lobby was powerless against their political clout, but things started to go our way again in the 1980s.
Nelson Mandela is a terrorist.
We're going to save the world by invading Iran. And then China's next!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Come on Lefties!
So, ... Rob Ford campaigned that there wouldn't be any cuts to services because there was so much easily discernible waste at City Hall that cleaning it up would uncover hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings.
Turns out that was complete bullshit.
So, ... decades of assaults on the livelihoods and resources of ordinary people around the world has produced a hollowed-out economy, top-heavy with a bloated financial sector that resorts to investing in fraudulent investment instruments, producing a mammoth, multi-trillion dollar economic collapse.
Our elites respond by bailing out the financial sector with taxpayers' dollars and imposing austerity to cover the deficits. And everybody just goes along with it.
First the Liberals, then the harpercons, send our troops to fight, kill, and die to prop-up an incompetent, corrupt, thieving, rapist, unpopular puppet-government, force our soldiers to hand prisoners over to torturers, and then, the harpercons violate the fundamental principles of parliamentary government to avoid having to account for their war crimes, and then they nickle and dime the troops when they're maimed or wounded.
And they get away with it, whereas we're slandered as hating the troops.
And on and on it goes.
And what do we do?
Oh, sometimes we form little "civil society" debating clubs. Or we engage in small, local "actions" that often accomplish nothing. Or, when we're really fired up, we have a rally and anywhere from 50 to 50,000 of us show up and chant and sometimes march and hold signs for an afternoon. And we're ignored. Sometimes, "radical" "direct-action" types smash some windows (which local window repair people probably like) and then scamper away leaving the peaceful afternoon protesters to be brutalized by the police truncheons. Other times, police agents provocateurs do the smashing, "justifying" the brutal response. And, still other times, people are brutalized just because our elites are in a hippie-smashing mood. But, the main thing is that aside from some shots of vandalism replayed over and over on the television news, or the gripping footage of riot police beating up innocent people, we're ignored.
Oh yes. One other thing stands out: Our carbon-fuelled economy appears to be putting the survival of civilization at risk. Unfortunately for us, our carbon-fuel industry appears to be powerful enough to compel most of our politicians to do nothing about it but deny the crisis. It's financed public-relations campaigns to create doubt about the science, which, generally right-wing shit-heads (some of whom can do math) embrace whole-heartedly, as it allows them to make asses of themselves yet again, pretending that climate scientists are all hippie-airhead commie saboteurs, out to destroy Christian civilization.
This is an outrage! Let's have rally to protest it next weekend!
Turns out that was complete bullshit.
So, ... decades of assaults on the livelihoods and resources of ordinary people around the world has produced a hollowed-out economy, top-heavy with a bloated financial sector that resorts to investing in fraudulent investment instruments, producing a mammoth, multi-trillion dollar economic collapse.
Our elites respond by bailing out the financial sector with taxpayers' dollars and imposing austerity to cover the deficits. And everybody just goes along with it.
First the Liberals, then the harpercons, send our troops to fight, kill, and die to prop-up an incompetent, corrupt, thieving, rapist, unpopular puppet-government, force our soldiers to hand prisoners over to torturers, and then, the harpercons violate the fundamental principles of parliamentary government to avoid having to account for their war crimes, and then they nickle and dime the troops when they're maimed or wounded.
And they get away with it, whereas we're slandered as hating the troops.
And on and on it goes.
And what do we do?
Oh, sometimes we form little "civil society" debating clubs. Or we engage in small, local "actions" that often accomplish nothing. Or, when we're really fired up, we have a rally and anywhere from 50 to 50,000 of us show up and chant and sometimes march and hold signs for an afternoon. And we're ignored. Sometimes, "radical" "direct-action" types smash some windows (which local window repair people probably like) and then scamper away leaving the peaceful afternoon protesters to be brutalized by the police truncheons. Other times, police agents provocateurs do the smashing, "justifying" the brutal response. And, still other times, people are brutalized just because our elites are in a hippie-smashing mood. But, the main thing is that aside from some shots of vandalism replayed over and over on the television news, or the gripping footage of riot police beating up innocent people, we're ignored.
Oh yes. One other thing stands out: Our carbon-fuelled economy appears to be putting the survival of civilization at risk. Unfortunately for us, our carbon-fuel industry appears to be powerful enough to compel most of our politicians to do nothing about it but deny the crisis. It's financed public-relations campaigns to create doubt about the science, which, generally right-wing shit-heads (some of whom can do math) embrace whole-heartedly, as it allows them to make asses of themselves yet again, pretending that climate scientists are all hippie-airhead commie saboteurs, out to destroy Christian civilization.
This is an outrage! Let's have rally to protest it next weekend!
Friday, July 15, 2011
A Great Summary of the Hollow Core of Rupert Murdoch's Populism
Jeff Sparrow: "The Phony Populism of Rupert Murdoch":
Testify!Consider the United States, where, after decades of the neoliberalism that Murdoch has unceasingly championed, an extraordinary ten per cent of the total personal income goes to the top 0.1 per cent of the populace, a disparity only rivalled by impoverished nations like Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. Strangely, those who belong to America's gilded fraction are not refugees or welfare queens or pampered prisoners, nor even pretentious professors or fussy multiculturalists or the other easy tabloid targets. Rather, they are very much a traditional ruling class, made up of people who look very much like Rupert Murdoch, his sons and the rest of his corporate lieutenants.
And that, in a nutshell, is why the populism that comes from News International will always be so phoney.
Politics Costs Money
And we don't have it. In the 1970s, the government started to fund groups to provide alternative analysis. They don't do that anymore. Because alternative analysis is dangerous.
From the 1950s to today, the trade unions are a huge source of funding for lefty initiatives. However, under decades of neo-liberal counterattacks, and derided by environmentalists as a selfish interest group with a vested interest in our eco-destroying system of production and consumption, they've shrivelled.
Meanwhile, corporations use OUR money to pay full-time public relations teams and full-time lobbyists to influence the media, the wider society and the politicians who write the rules. And some of us are convinced that small groups of isolated individuals, or environmental organizations relying on uncertain individual donations from a society marked by increasing economic inequality, is enough to fight back with.
From the 1950s to today, the trade unions are a huge source of funding for lefty initiatives. However, under decades of neo-liberal counterattacks, and derided by environmentalists as a selfish interest group with a vested interest in our eco-destroying system of production and consumption, they've shrivelled.
Meanwhile, corporations use OUR money to pay full-time public relations teams and full-time lobbyists to influence the media, the wider society and the politicians who write the rules. And some of us are convinced that small groups of isolated individuals, or environmental organizations relying on uncertain individual donations from a society marked by increasing economic inequality, is enough to fight back with.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Did they find those WMDs yet?
Seriously?
Oh, ... and when did Rob Ford decide that some of Toronto's library branches were part of the "gravy train" of "waste" he's been screeching about?
Everything our opponents believe seems to turn out to be a big pile of garbage.
Given their demonstrated contempt for democracy, when can we demonstrate our contempt for them?
(And I really have to say, the right-wing trolls who pollute my comments section every now and then, remind me of some gibbering idiot pissing all over himself in a burning building. You yell at them to get out and they continue to shower themselves and giggle at you like you're a fool. Then you give up in frustration and allow them to burn.)
Oh, ... and when did Rob Ford decide that some of Toronto's library branches were part of the "gravy train" of "waste" he's been screeching about?
Everything our opponents believe seems to turn out to be a big pile of garbage.
Given their demonstrated contempt for democracy, when can we demonstrate our contempt for them?
(And I really have to say, the right-wing trolls who pollute my comments section every now and then, remind me of some gibbering idiot pissing all over himself in a burning building. You yell at them to get out and they continue to shower themselves and giggle at you like you're a fool. Then you give up in frustration and allow them to burn.)
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Would Any Canadian Government Recognize Palestine's Right to Exist
So, the stupid, lying, pathetic closet-case who pretends to be Canada's Foreign Minister says that Canada won't recognize Palestine's right to exist.
Having just torn apart Rosie DiMoron's incoherent, rambling gibberish that was her attempt to defend Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, I realize now that Canada's political culture is so debased that DiMoron is actually taken seriously by a small, but significant minority of people.
I realize that I live in a world where perhaps 50% of Canadians cheered lustily when the Israelis murdered unarmed peace activists on the high seas last summer. There are millions of Canadians who genuinely believe that nuclear-armed Israel, with one of the world's most modern fleets of fighter planes, with a standing army of 150,000, is at risk of destruction from the Palestinians and their rockets and machine-guns.
In such a debased, stupid world, I wonder whether or not any political party in Canada would have the strength of character to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Somehow I doubt it.
Having just torn apart Rosie DiMoron's incoherent, rambling gibberish that was her attempt to defend Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, I realize now that Canada's political culture is so debased that DiMoron is actually taken seriously by a small, but significant minority of people.
I realize that I live in a world where perhaps 50% of Canadians cheered lustily when the Israelis murdered unarmed peace activists on the high seas last summer. There are millions of Canadians who genuinely believe that nuclear-armed Israel, with one of the world's most modern fleets of fighter planes, with a standing army of 150,000, is at risk of destruction from the Palestinians and their rockets and machine-guns.
In such a debased, stupid world, I wonder whether or not any political party in Canada would have the strength of character to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Somehow I doubt it.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
"Fisking" Rosie DiMoron's Steaming Pile of Crapola on Afghanistan
Keep watching this space if you're interested. If you haven't read her stream of nonsensical gibberish, here it is.
Bye for now.
AND WE'RE BACK! ...
Bye for now.
AND WE'RE BACK! ...
I don’t have any respect for Rosie DiManno. None whatsoever. I’ll admit that it’s gratifying to read her trashing the moronic thug, TPS Chief Bill Blair over his atrocities at the Toronto G20 Summit, but I don’t give DiManno much credit for her stance. In that case, it’s simply that the truth is so obvious that even Rosie DiManno gets it. Nope. I don’t have an iota of respect for this psychopathic windbag. I’ve heard the theory that The Toronto Star features DiManno as a one-woman freak show because she generates “controversy” and, therefore, readership. I would like to say again, that one of the reasons that I won’t pay for the Star is because they feature this useless, babbling idiot.
KANDAHAR
We don’t listen to soldiers in Canada.
Oh boo-fucking-hoo. You know who else doesn’t get listened to in Canada? The left. The social justice activists. The free trade critics. There are all sorts of occupations that don’t get listened to: teachers, climate scientists, social workers. Why should we listen to soldiers above everyone else? If soldiers feel ignored, they can take a number and get in line with a lot of other people.
Furthermore, just to remind you Rosie; Canada is not a military dictatorship. We’re a democracy. We don’t base our foreign policy on the wishes of our soldiers. To the contrary, our soldiers are technically supposed to quietly obey orders and go wherever we tell them to and do what we tell them to. Personally, I’m quite prepared to listen to what soldiers have to say about something. Not that I believe that their individual, isolated experiences in a war zone inevitably gives them a greater understanding of issues and events than people studying events from afar. I’m just pointing out this important aspect of democracy for Rosie’s sake. You see, Rosie is a quasi-militarist. She swoons over authoritative men in uniform. She’s quite prepared to let democratic decision making go out the window if some steely-jawed guy in a fancy uniform tells her it should. I doubt Rosie has the self-awareness to apply her own thesis here to the documented example of soldiers not being listened to: the soldiers who complained about the Afghan military and political personnel who were raping children. They were all told to shut-up about it. That says volumes about “the mission” right there. And, furthermore, while Rosie is self-servingly taking the side of “the troops” in whining about how they’re ignored, she also neglects to mention how when soldiers speak-up about certain issues, such as the way they’re nickeled and dimed by Veterans Affairs for disability pay and medical expenses, they’re harassed and slandered. It is ever thus with these right-wing militarists: Can’t do enough for “the troops,” unless they get wounded and become useless. Then, it’s pull down the blinds on my train window, they’re disturbing my dinner.
Oh, we honour them and praise them and always include that disingenuous disclaimer — “I’m not criticizing our brave men and women’’ — when otherwise slamming the military mission in Afghanistan.
That’s right Rosie. And criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is always raging, Nazi-level anti-Semitism. I know! Let’s try something Rosie, ....whaddaya say? Check this out:
People who go on about building democracy and protecting women’s rights in Afghanistan all just want to dupe us into their policy of killing as many Afghan men, women, and children as we can.
How d’you like that one Rosie? Is it really the case that all your turgid prose about “the troops” and whatever other moronic nonsense you’re going to spew here is all just a cover for your infernal bloodlust? Hey! Where you going?? Are you the only one who gets to make the sleazy accusations here? Coward!
But if we truly bent our ears to what soldiers have been saying for the past decade, there would be little reason to ask: Was it worth it?
Oh, really? Well, let’s see ...
War is part of the human condition, a vestigial tic.
Oh for fuck’s sake. How about rape Rosie? What about stupidity? Fine, fine. Let’s see where you plan on going with this drivel ...
It will never be erased from our DNA, despite conflict resolution classes for school yard squabbles and UN mediation diplomacy for combatant states.
Ha-ha! Yes! All those silly, pinko, faggy, GIRLY things that “liberals” use to try to stamp out human nature! All of it foolish nonsense, right Rosie? Not like the war-mongering of geniuses such as bush II, Jean Chretien, stephen harper, Hitler, Attila the Hun. Boy! We could learn something from those he-men who recognize that war is something we’ll never get out of our system!
As long as there’s a bully with an army or an oppressed constituency yearning for freedom, kinetic confrontation is inevitable.
Oh. Are those the only causes of war? OTHER bullies with armies (as opposed to ourselves) and our attempts to quench yearnings for freedom around the world? Idiot.
There are mostly good wars, defensible, and mostly bad wars, unpardonable. Sometimes only the passing of time can render a distinction or even provide a verdict: Who won? Who lost? And does it even matter?
Sure it does. Go on.
I believe it does matter. I believe there is far less grey in right versus wrong than proponents of moral equivalency would argue.
Yes. But you believe all sorts of stupid things based on your mammoth ignorance and pig-headedness Rosie. That’s the whole problem (as we shall see) ...
I believe in liberal evolution and using might prudently to liberate — the antithesis of international isolationism. I believe the left has lost touch with the ideals it expounded in the Spanish Civil War and the right has lost any credibility in justifying invasion of Iraq (under a Republican president) while urging dramatic troop withdrawals from Afghanistan (under a Democratic president).
Okay. So, the invasion of Afghanistan was like the Spanish Civil War because, ... because, ... oh right: Both sides shot at each other.
Sigh. No, Rosie. The invasion of Afghanistan is nothing like the Spanish Civil War. Even people who would denigrate the left’s version of the Spanish Civil War would say so. Defending an elected socialist government that was attacked by fascist rebels is nothing like propping-up a corrupt puppet-government that was installed by a super-power after the original government of religious fanatics was toppled. They’re not similar in any important ways. You’re just an idiot Rosie. You seriously believe that they’re the same because there are two sides shooting at each other. You want to remind any leftists who have forgotten (or never knew) that, once upon a time, leftists believed going overseas and fighting for a cause was worthwhile and noble.
And, I’ll give you the credit of consistency with regards to your condemnation of the obvious hypocrisy of the US Repugnicans who are only re-discovering the rights of Congress to declare war, and worrying about the costs of the USA’s many wars, only because a Democrat is in the White House. Unlike them, your bloodlust stays constant, no matter who is ordering the killing.
I believe in nation-building.
Then you might want to have a fucking talk with the neo-liberal, imperialist scum behind this squalid adventure. They’re the ones who think that imposing a government of corrupt, thieving rapists upon a people is a good idea. They’re the ones who have enabled the Karzai-Warlord government as it has plundered and abused the people of Afghanistan, especially the Pashtun, and created the alienation and anger that has produced a constantly growing insurgency.
You know, the funny thing is Rosie, that you claim to believe in nation-building, while at the same time you’ve turned a blind eye to torture. What sort of revolting nation-state do you believe we should build in Afghanistan? (Never mind. You’re offerings here are incoherent and stupid enough. I’m not interested in hearing more from you.)
War should never be about partisan political currency, though Ottawa has been just as guilty of that as Washington, only more sanctimoniously.
Rosie’s accusing others of being sanctimonious! Hilarious!
What a society has the right — indeed the obligation — to demand is that any deployment of its armed forces into an active battle space be rigorously debated, even if parliamentary approval isn’t required.
That’s funny Rosie! Because all the time you’re ranting and raving about how criticism of “the mission” is just an under-handed attempt to trash “the troops”! “Rigorously debated” is just a catch-phrase for you. You don’t want “rigorous debate” you want blind affirmation. Every time someone has tried to “rigorously debate” Afghanistan you’ve attempted to mock and slander them.
Canadians didn’t get that originally, when the first battle group was dispatched to Kandahar for a whole host of reasons — from not wanting any part of Iraq to multilateral obligations among allies to a desire to re-grow the military after years of neglect and drastic funding cutbacks, a kind of disarmament by fiscal sabotage.
Rosie’s getting a little ahead of herself folks. She careens straight from the obligation for “rigorous debate” and how we didn’t get it, to a tirade about the under-funding of the military, all in the same paragraph! All in the same sentence! What a nut-bar! (Unless she really meant to pay mere lip-service to “rigorous debate” and couldn’t wait to get on to the subject of the military again.)
Subsequent governments did a poor job of explaining why we’re here and what the objective was, ...
I’d say that they’ve done about as good a job as you’re doing. They’ve tried to lie and dissemble, because why we’re there, our objective, has always been pretty unpalatable. Please the US-Americans to defend their corrupt, fraudulently elected, misogynist, rapist, warlord puppet-government until the outcry or financial costs become too heavy to bear or the US government says that we can go home.
... even as those aims shifted when fluid realities were encountered. The core assignment didn’t change, however: to extend the writ of Afghanistan’s nascent central government in the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and strengthen security.
That’s another way of putting it. “Afghanistan’s nascent central government” is corrupt Rosie. It’s underpaid police officers kidnap people and hold them for ransom. It’s governors are often warlords of a different ethnic group who lord it over their subjects like feudal despots. The insurgency has grown (and Afghan men have run to the Taliban-led resistance) because we’ve burned their crops (of opium poppies) with little or no compensation, and left them to the depredations of the “nascent central government.” That’s it, right there. There’s the failure of “the mission.” There’s what you and all you imbecilic defenders of “the mission” can’t argue your way around: The government we are trying to impose upon the people of Afghanistan is hated by many of the people of Afghanistan because it is brutal, corrupt, and dictatorial and they don’t want it and it’s a matter of life or death for many of them.
This is not quantum physics, people. Everything else was an add-on or a optics pitch — reconstruction and re-development, opening schools, building roads, alleviating the misogynist misery inflicted on females, all that humanitarian stuff that makes Canadians feel so good about themselves and, frankly, superior.
You’re such a babbling idiot Rosie. All of the good stuff “was an add-on or an optics pitch” the core assignment was to prop-up a corrupt dictatorship???? You fucking idiot. No, seriously, ... you complete fucking idiot. And furthermore, fucking idiot, what is it with you and your contempt for “humanitarian stuff”??? And why do you think that you, of all people, gets to criticize other people for feeling superior about something? You know, I “GET” it. You have contempt for pinkos and lefties, who try occasionally to feel some sort of pride in their worthy causes, so you deride us as smug, elitist, namby-pamby, whatevers, .... but for you, Rosie DiManno to criticize people for giving off vibes of smug superiority is really quite rich. You give off a constant stink of smug superiority.
The media, at least, did explain it, repeatedly; most particularly those who came here to witness events with their own eyes, draw conclusions, rather that sit home blowing polemical smoke rings and conspiracy theories out their arses.
I see. You’re awesome if you do say so yourself. Yeah right fuck-face. And you and your sister-in-stupidity, Christie Belchforth were quick to slag Richard Colvin for speaking the truth about Afghanistan weren’t you? Colvin spoke the truth from a position of knowledge and experience and you disgracefully jumped at the chance to join the prime minister’s campaign of demonization and slander against him. You’re a twisted fucking joke.
Task Force Afghanistan has been too easily, disgracefully, usurped as a whipping-post for pre-existing agendas, particularly a long-held — though latterly figleaf-covered — revulsion for the military.
Oh there you go again. The same old bullshit. The same old ignorance and dishonesty. Chretien and Martin and harper sent “the troops’ to prop-up a corrupt dictatorship in order to curry favour with the US-Americans. End of story. Finito. That’s all there is to say and that’s why “the mission” has been a failure. Because the Pashtun majority of Afghanistan hates the government we’ve imposed upon them. The sooner you get that through your fat head, the sooner your mystification and your insane spinning about looking for scapegoats will end. Dumb-ass.
If you still don’t know why Canada was in Afghanistan, then you’ve just not been paying attention, or you don’t actually want to be informed, merely have your misperceptions reinforced.
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!
And the Taliban did take succour from this. Spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousaf Ahmadi put out a statement via email Friday, applauding Canada’s formal end-of-combat this past week, claiming the withdrawal from Kandahar had been “compelled’’ by the mujahedeen resistance — though of course the Taliban are not mujahedeen and were violently opposed by the greatest mujahedeen of them all, Ahmed Shah Massoud, until Al Qaeda assassinated him — a quid pro quo arrangement with Mullah Omar on the eve of 9/11.
Here comes a lengthy attempt from DiManno, equating the peace movement in Canada with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Again, Rosie, anybody can play the game of sleazy accusations. Perhaps I should equate you with the boy rapists in the Karzai-Warlord government?
“In addition to the life loss, the heavy economic burden of the war dawned on the people and members of the Parliament of Canada to press the ruling regime in Canada to withdraw their forces,’’ Yousaf Ahmadi says. “While appreciating the responsible step of the people of Canada, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan calls on the people of other invading countries to realize the ground realities of the illegitimate and worthless war of Afghanistan and oblige their government to put an end to the aimless war.
“The people of Canada have to ask their government and military chiefs what are the objectives and achievements that they have obtained during the past decade, apart from the innumerous losses in life and equipments. If they have no answer, then why they allow them to continue their illegitimate intervention in Afghanistan under another title in the name of military training?’’
There are some Canadian newspaper columnists who should sue Yousaf for plagiarism.
Really Rosie? Maybe you, so brave, noble and true, could go up to the families that have joined the insurgency and explain how all the “humanitarian stuff” they want is stupid and that the core truth is that they should continue to support the government which abuses them and robs them. Try your stupid bullshit on them Rosie.
As a matter of fact Rosie, since you see an equivalence between the people who say we should stop defending a corrupt, rapist government against an insurgency led by the fanatical psychopaths, and the fanatical psychopaths who are leading the insurgency; would it be fair to say that there's an equivalence between you and the torturers and rapists in the Karzai government? You both want to keep fighting the insurgency after all. That should be enough to make you completely indistinguishable from each other, right?
Why did Canadian men and women die in Afghanistan? Because they chose to be soldiers, and continued enlisting as the mission got hotter and bloodier, one segment of the population that didn’t cower and look for the exit sign as casualties increased.
You skipped a part Rosie. They chose to be soldiers, AND THEN THE CHRETIEN GOVERNMENT SENT THEM TO AFGHANISTAN. And, yes, some CF have re-enlisted. Do you honestly believe it was because they believe in the Karzai government? Or do you think maybe it’s because the military is in their blood, or they want to stay with their fellow soldiers in harm’s way? And, regardless, do you think that Canada’s foreign policy should be decided by the Canadian Forces?
A battle group is all about the combat. Their profession is fighting. They didn’t come here as naifs. They don’t need you to watch their backs or look over their shoulders. And they know many of you don’t have their backs, not really. Some appropriated their sacrifices and called it a “waste.’’
Um, ... actually, we’re OBLIGATED to look over their shoulders. It’s called democratic accountability. Something this war has been used to justify the shredding of. Not that you recognize the importance of that, you stunted, twisted creature. And their injuries and maimings and deaths were a waste. If and when foreign troops leave, the country will fall to pieces because our psychopathic leaders didn’t give a shit about what they were imposing on the people of Afghanistan. It’s all been about a corrupt government upon them. A waste if ever there was one. And you cheered it on Rosie. The blood of tortured and murdered Afghans is on your hands. The blood of “the troops” is on your hands. (This blood is on all of our hands as voters and taxpayers, but it’s thicker on some people’s than others’.)
What have Canadians accomplished here? Bluntly: They held the line against the Taliban in Kandahar, despite never having enough troops to push back and hold. While insurgents reclaimed many regions that Canadian soldiers died in seizing — a recent UN report identified only five districts in the province accessible to their staff — they too were never able to solidify or exploit their gains. And they couldn’t take the prize most coveted — Kandahar City, symbolic capital of Afghanistan re-mediaevalized. If Kandahar had fallen, Kabul would have been next, a replay of the Taliban’s black-turbaned march to power in the late 20th century.
Wow. So the Green Team fought the Red Team to a stand-still, is that it? Or, is it more accurate to say that Canadian soldiers fought, killed, and died, to resist an insurgency led by a monstrous band of religious fanatics and misogynists, which is in revolt against a corrupt, fraudulently elected puppet-government of rapists and plunderers and we managed to contain them?
That didn’t happen because Canadians were here and prevented it.
Big. Fucking. Deal.
Afghanistan is opaque, at least in parts. The north and west are generally calm, the south and east are generally volatile. The insurgency managed to regenerate itself after the Taliban was toppled in 2001 by a U.S.-led coalition but is nowhere near as formidable as many accounts suggest. What insurgents have mastered is the art of the spectacular — lethal strikes against soft targets such as hotels and medical clinics and town markets. They have never won a battle. They have certainly not won the war.
Yeah. And the Aztecs were defeated by the Spaniards. And the Zulu were defeated by the British. And the Vietnamese suffered appalling casualties at the hands of the US-Americans. It’s called technical superiority Rosie. It’s actually an old story.
Canadian troops arrived in Afghanistan ill-prepared, institutionally, for the challenges that loomed — recall the jungle-green camo and vulnerable open-air Iltis jeeps. Only in early 2009, following the Manley Report, were Chinooks reacquired for the safer transportation of battle companies to forward operating bases, with Griffins as aircraft protectors. Belatedly, the troops were kitted up properly. But throughout, they acquitted themselves as arguably the best small army in the world.
Maybe. You’d know better than me. I’ll give you that much. But to what end? (Never mind. You’re incapable of answering coherently.)
It feels like a lifetime ago, that first roto deployment in 2006 by the Princess Pats. For some of them, and for many more who followed, it was a lifetime ago: 157 soldiers, one diplomat, one journalist and two aid workers killed.
Was it worth it?
Sometimes, watching the mess of governance being made by President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt regime, I too have doubts.
WHAT???? But that’s the “core assignment”!!!! Get this troop-hating dog out of my sight! She’s a disgrace! She’s appropriating the sacrifice of our glorious troops and calling it a waste!!!!
Karzai’s escalating anti-Western outbursts are deplorable, even when weighed in terms of appealing to a domestic audience. “They have come to our country for their own goals and interests and they are using our country,’’ he fulminated during a recent speech, a man of many faces, none of them honest.
Actually Rosie, Karzai, to his credit, has constantly deplored the cowardly NATO airstrikes which, some years, have killed more Afghan civilians than were killed by the insurgency. In that, at least, he’s right. And, furthermore, the uselessness of his demands that these cowardly airstrikes halt is testimony to his powerlessness as a US puppet. When the “sovereign” President of Afghanistan calls again and again for a halt on the airstrikes that are killing his people and he is ignored, everyone can see that he’s a figurehead. Finally, Karzai’s corruption and thuggery don’t detract from the truth of his criticisms. The USA is NOT in Afghanistan for the good of the Afghan people and neither is Canada or any other NATO power. We’re all in it for our own self-interest. The US wants bases in Central Asia and wanted to surround the inconveniently autonomous Iran with supportive US client states. Canada is there, as militarist-historian Jack Granatstein says, to placate the US-Americans in their demand for allies in order to keep goods and services flowing across the Canada-US border. If we gave a shit about the people of Afghanistan we would not have tolerated such a brutal, unpopular government, and would have done the hard work of building a genuinely democratic, honest government. (Please note: I’m aware of the ridiculousness of the idea of either the USA or Canada building a democratic, honest government, since we’re incapable of doing so ourselves.)
Billions of dollars in donor funds have poured into Afghanistan — $1 billion from Canada in aid — yet accountability for it remains sketchy.
Yeah. Brilliant Rosie. It’s too hard to follow where your money is going. Best to just kill people. (And spend $9 billion doing it.)
When in an inclusive mood, Karzai describes the insurgents as “brothers and compatriots’’ who must claim their rightful place in Afghanistan’s political life.
As opposed to Hillary Clinton talking about her family friend Hosni Mubarak? Or Ronald Reagan talking about how the cowardly torturing murderers in the Contras were the moral equivalent of the founding fathers? Not really. Karzai is making an acknowledgment that the vast insurgency against him contains many of his countrymen and he can’t simply pretend to expel them from the population if he’s ever to survive after NATO leaves.
Even President Barrack Obama has acknowledged that U.S. contacts with Taliban-allied individuals have taken place as a prelude to possible negotiations. But war is always a prelude to negotiations, ...
WTF?? Don’t you have an editor? War is good because it’s a prelude to negotiations???
more so when no formal ceasefire is anticipated. If the coalition— the International Sec2urity Assistance Force — has been battered over the past five years, so have the Taliban and their associates, from Al Qaeda to the Pakistan-based Haqqani network.
Again Rosie. Yes. The two teams have battered each other. But that’s no reason to cheer mindlessly for “our” team. “Our” team includes the corrupt Karzai, and the imperialist US-Americans.
Disaster is still as likely as success in Kandahar, even in the narrowed area of operations, Panjwaii, where Canadians have effectively focused their counter-insurgency efforts since 2009. This last Roto conducted 3,000 patrols, 130 operations, 900 shuras, found 300 weapon caches and 250 IEDs.
Americans have now swarmed into that terrain, assuming responsibility for all of Kandahar province. But it’s alarming to hear Gen. David Petraeus, as he takes leave of the Afghanistan overall command, talk about a shift eastward in the coming months, from Taliban strongholds in the south to the lawless border where insurgents have close ties to Al Qaeda and other militant organizations, in what is an undeclared but intensifying war with Pakistan.
Some have snidely opined that Canada has tried to put a veneer of victory on its operations in Kandahar, just as the Americans are now doing to justify Obama’s drawdown of troops. Yet it’s even more mendacious to proclaim a veneer of defeat.
I’ll just note here that Rosie does nothing to back up her idiotic assertion that it’s mendacious to proclaim a defeat. It’s just some empty words that sounded good to the dunce. So she wrote them.
Further, the equation is not only what did Canada do for Afghanistan but what did Afghanistan do for Canada?
Oh, this should be good ...
Off the top it laid to rest, forever, the dewy-eyed concept of peacekeeping. A blue beret military had its place, an honourable one, in history. But that era has passed, unlikely ever to return.
Fuck off Rosie. It’s great that we’re no longer peacekeepers, even though it was honourable that we were, but things have inexplicably changed and now we get to blow the fuck out of rag-heads and who knows who else in the future, ... is that it? Moron.
From the ashes of tacit demobilization, a robust Canadian Forces arose, Phoenix-like — a military fit to stand on guard for righteous wars in distant lands.
Yeah. Let me know when we find one. Actually, scratch that. Rosie, you don’t have a clue what constitutes a righteous war. So just forget about it.
Something that was lost has been found.
They are soldiers.
Nutbar.
Do you want to know what else Afghanistan did for Canada?
It got 157 soldiers killed and almost 2,000 wounded in the cause of propping-up a monstrous government.
It increased the influence of bloodthirsty war-mongers in this country.
By refusing to spend the money on our own prison system (or even going in on one with fellow NATO allies) it made Canada complicit in the torture of our prisoners. A war crime.
The cover-up of our war crimes compelled our asshole "NOT" prime minister to force yet another constitutional crises. One which inspired his shit-head followers to say such things as "the honour of the Canadian military is more important than the rights of Parliament." [!]
The attempt to quash the constitutional crisis produced the second abuse of the power of prorogation of the harper government. A year and a half's worth of legislation died so that harper could avoid public scrutiny into his war crimes. Then, harper offered as an idiotic excuse that his prorogation was motivated by a desire to focus on the economy. This insult to our collective intelligence was uttered at the same time that harper was patting himself on the back for having ridden out the storm and that, consequently, he was "winding down" his response to the economic crisis.
harper has successfully used bullshit "national security" arguments to weaken the power and the prestige of Parliament, especially when it comes to the most basic oversight of our conduct in a war-zone.
The Afghanistan "mission" has disgraced this country Rosie. In the Somalia Scandal, the torture and death of one Somali teenager tore this country apart. Now, in Afghanistan, the armies of drooling idiots of the right-wing are happily wandering around saying "La-la-la! I can't hear you! We won the election! Parliament has no rights! La-la-la!" We don't care about torture and we behave like wretched cowards, deliberately turning our heads away from it.
Afghanistan has disgraced us and mortally weakened our democracy Rosie. You're too debased and stupid to realize this.
In a better world, absolute idiots like Rosie DiManno would not have national newspapers giving them a steady gig to fart out their evil-smelling absurdities. I find that I have little time for "blogging" these days, and often times, little motivation, what with the irrelevance of the entire leftist critique of present-day insanities. But the Afghanistan "mission" has been so disgusting, and its defenders so irredeemably stupid, that when one of the queen bees of Canadian imperialism produces such a ridiculous summation and attempted justification for the whole debacle, I am thankful that I have the opportunity to respond in such a way that at least ten or twenty people might be able to read it.
(Note: "Blogger's" formatting appears to be having conniptions and I gave up trying to create some sort of font type and colour consistency as every change seems to fuck up something else.)
Saturday, July 9, 2011
What Do We Actually DO, We People of the West?
I've been reading a lot about World War II lately. I don't romanticize the conflict. Unless epic tragedies caused by deluded fuck-wits can be romanticized. But I do think about the future those people were fighting and dying for. (Or, in the case of the civilians murdered by the leaders, the future that many simply missed by being killed.)
To a great degree, in the Western democracies, democracy was never stronger than after the war. The ordinary people, who felt deserving of a say after the shared sacrifices of the war, and all the hooting and hollering about "democracy" and "equality" from those leaders inspiring them to fight, made their demands very clear. And those demands were all about material concerns, and why not? Protection from the appalling insecurities of unemployment in an industrial capitalist economy. The right to unionize to deal with the collective of the industrial corporation or conglomerates with some degree of equality and dignity. The taxation of the super-rich to fund a more human way of life in the great cities. Access to education. Access to decent health care.
Here's the thing: These material benefits helped produce generations of people, of whom, MANY (but not all) had the privilege and comfort and peace of mind, to be able to think about people and issues other than themselves.
I'm talking, of course, about the much-maligned "hippies." The feminists. The peace-movement activists. The civil-rights activists. The environmental activists. Derided by small-minded, stunted, twisted souls today, these people thought beyond their own immediate self-interest and helped to create many improvements and bring a degree of sanity to our civilization. At the same time that they were doing this, our governments and capitalists, were both building things. To a great degree this was made possible by the wealth created by the reforms that had been demanded in the post-War period.
Not all of these things were blessings. The St. Lawrence Seaway has caused a number of unintended ecological consequences. The CN Tower is actually a monstrosity (even though I've been up it twice).
But I look at these public projects, from the 1950s and the 1970s, and I think: Has there been any project of similar ambition and confidence produced since the 1970s? What have we been doing as a people?
For the most part, it's consisted of austerity at home, and, lately, throwing money down rat-holes in military adventures like Afghanistan. Oh, that, and shovelling even more money at the wealthiest in the faint hope that once they're lying on heaps of gold deep enough to swim in, they'll feel some "confidence" and "invest in the economy" to hire people. (This after they've been laying us off for years pronouncing our labour costs as "unrealistic" or "un-competitive" with wage rates prevailing in Mexico, Brazil, China, or India.)
And what have we, as a people, been doing? For the most part we've been complete cowards. Gutless dupes. As the elites have turned against the post-war compromise and counter-attacked, the majority of us, it seems, are all fired up to beat on the weakest and the poorest. Supposedly petty criminals and welfare recipients held us all hostage for decades and wrecked the economy in their mad lust for substandard housing and poverty-level incomes, but NO MORE! Or else it's immigrants; both too lazy to work and stealing our jobs at the same time. Anti-immigration hysterics can't seem to find the time to research the probable causes of immigration to Canada. They're too selfish, stupid, and oafish to look into how the Western elite-managed IMF imposes economy-destroying policies on those countries. US-Americans shriek about the Mexican invasion, never looking at how NAFTA has devastated Mexico's economy.
Large minorities of Canadian voters embrace wars on the weakest and the poorest, as well as upon those groups (some of whom are simultaneously among the weakest and the poorest) whose work over the decades was so crucial for improving the Canadian standard of living (feminists, environmentalists, artists, civil rights activists), and cheerfully support shit-head politicians who blatantly rob them and cheat them, and acquiesce (probably out of laziness and ignorance) to an economic system that increases their economic insecurity and reduces their chances of a future. They read garbage and swill, suitable perhaps to their level of mental and moral illiteracy (Toronto Sun, National Post) that only clouds their minds with delusions and lies.
As a result of the ascendancy of these morons, we have governments that do nothing for us but brutalize us and lie to us. We have an economic system lurching from one crisis to another (larger) crisis. We have an industrial-consumerist way of life that is suicidal. We build nothing. We achieve nothing. Nothing but our own sad, ridiculous demise.
And, while it all goes down, these witless fools will renounce ALL of their legal and civil rights, in the pathetic hope that the governments and elites who betrayed them and led them to ruin, will torture and execute the "right people" to keep them safe.
To a great degree, in the Western democracies, democracy was never stronger than after the war. The ordinary people, who felt deserving of a say after the shared sacrifices of the war, and all the hooting and hollering about "democracy" and "equality" from those leaders inspiring them to fight, made their demands very clear. And those demands were all about material concerns, and why not? Protection from the appalling insecurities of unemployment in an industrial capitalist economy. The right to unionize to deal with the collective of the industrial corporation or conglomerates with some degree of equality and dignity. The taxation of the super-rich to fund a more human way of life in the great cities. Access to education. Access to decent health care.
Here's the thing: These material benefits helped produce generations of people, of whom, MANY (but not all) had the privilege and comfort and peace of mind, to be able to think about people and issues other than themselves.
I'm talking, of course, about the much-maligned "hippies." The feminists. The peace-movement activists. The civil-rights activists. The environmental activists. Derided by small-minded, stunted, twisted souls today, these people thought beyond their own immediate self-interest and helped to create many improvements and bring a degree of sanity to our civilization. At the same time that they were doing this, our governments and capitalists, were both building things. To a great degree this was made possible by the wealth created by the reforms that had been demanded in the post-War period.
Not all of these things were blessings. The St. Lawrence Seaway has caused a number of unintended ecological consequences. The CN Tower is actually a monstrosity (even though I've been up it twice).
But I look at these public projects, from the 1950s and the 1970s, and I think: Has there been any project of similar ambition and confidence produced since the 1970s? What have we been doing as a people?
For the most part, it's consisted of austerity at home, and, lately, throwing money down rat-holes in military adventures like Afghanistan. Oh, that, and shovelling even more money at the wealthiest in the faint hope that once they're lying on heaps of gold deep enough to swim in, they'll feel some "confidence" and "invest in the economy" to hire people. (This after they've been laying us off for years pronouncing our labour costs as "unrealistic" or "un-competitive" with wage rates prevailing in Mexico, Brazil, China, or India.)
And what have we, as a people, been doing? For the most part we've been complete cowards. Gutless dupes. As the elites have turned against the post-war compromise and counter-attacked, the majority of us, it seems, are all fired up to beat on the weakest and the poorest. Supposedly petty criminals and welfare recipients held us all hostage for decades and wrecked the economy in their mad lust for substandard housing and poverty-level incomes, but NO MORE! Or else it's immigrants; both too lazy to work and stealing our jobs at the same time. Anti-immigration hysterics can't seem to find the time to research the probable causes of immigration to Canada. They're too selfish, stupid, and oafish to look into how the Western elite-managed IMF imposes economy-destroying policies on those countries. US-Americans shriek about the Mexican invasion, never looking at how NAFTA has devastated Mexico's economy.
Large minorities of Canadian voters embrace wars on the weakest and the poorest, as well as upon those groups (some of whom are simultaneously among the weakest and the poorest) whose work over the decades was so crucial for improving the Canadian standard of living (feminists, environmentalists, artists, civil rights activists), and cheerfully support shit-head politicians who blatantly rob them and cheat them, and acquiesce (probably out of laziness and ignorance) to an economic system that increases their economic insecurity and reduces their chances of a future. They read garbage and swill, suitable perhaps to their level of mental and moral illiteracy (Toronto Sun, National Post) that only clouds their minds with delusions and lies.
As a result of the ascendancy of these morons, we have governments that do nothing for us but brutalize us and lie to us. We have an economic system lurching from one crisis to another (larger) crisis. We have an industrial-consumerist way of life that is suicidal. We build nothing. We achieve nothing. Nothing but our own sad, ridiculous demise.
And, while it all goes down, these witless fools will renounce ALL of their legal and civil rights, in the pathetic hope that the governments and elites who betrayed them and led them to ruin, will torture and execute the "right people" to keep them safe.
Friday, July 8, 2011
I Can't Believe the Bullshit that People Fall For
Yeah, ... so apparently we're leaving Afghanistan, but for a few hundred sad sacks forced to work as trainers of the soldiers and police who are notorious for raping and pillaging on behalf of warlord governors and the Karzai kleptocracy.
Ten years of that shit. Ten years of lies. Ten years of "support the troops!" Ten years of torture. Ten years of insulting Canadian democracy.
And then the worst offenders get a majority government.
Don't get me started about the economy.
The fucking G20. Call me crazy, but I expected better of my fellow Canadians. I didn't expect such bovine complacency at the complete waste of one billion dollars and the blatant disregard for their human rights and our international reputation that was demonstrated there.
And now, sick of the thuggish, incompetent, corrupt McGuinty government, my fellow Ontarians seem poised to move all the way across the political spectrum from the centre right to the right-wing. They're prepared to punish the revolting McGuinty by electing the delusional, revolting Tim Hudak, who can then join fellow deluded right-wing fuck-ups Rob Ford and Don Cherry on the stage where they can bray like the stupid jack-asses they are while the world burns around them.
People really are consumed by their own little worlds. And, for the most part, our worlds, mine included, are filled up with wishes and desires created by corporate marketers and public relations brain-washers. Thus, we have the politics of idiocy. It was ever thus. Thus it ever shall be.
Schopenhauer was right, ... except for the part where he believed we could escape.
There's no escape from the ceaseless gravitating between frustrated desire to frustrated boredom.
Ten years of that shit. Ten years of lies. Ten years of "support the troops!" Ten years of torture. Ten years of insulting Canadian democracy.
And then the worst offenders get a majority government.
Don't get me started about the economy.
The fucking G20. Call me crazy, but I expected better of my fellow Canadians. I didn't expect such bovine complacency at the complete waste of one billion dollars and the blatant disregard for their human rights and our international reputation that was demonstrated there.
And now, sick of the thuggish, incompetent, corrupt McGuinty government, my fellow Ontarians seem poised to move all the way across the political spectrum from the centre right to the right-wing. They're prepared to punish the revolting McGuinty by electing the delusional, revolting Tim Hudak, who can then join fellow deluded right-wing fuck-ups Rob Ford and Don Cherry on the stage where they can bray like the stupid jack-asses they are while the world burns around them.
People really are consumed by their own little worlds. And, for the most part, our worlds, mine included, are filled up with wishes and desires created by corporate marketers and public relations brain-washers. Thus, we have the politics of idiocy. It was ever thus. Thus it ever shall be.
Schopenhauer was right, ... except for the part where he believed we could escape.
There's no escape from the ceaseless gravitating between frustrated desire to frustrated boredom.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
A Little Footnote on harper's Stupitity
Last year I blogged about an incendiary Toronto Sun cover story about a theatre festival featuring a play about a Canadian terrorist.
I just found out that the festival in question; Summerworks, lost its $47,000 in federal funding. No doubt part of the reason is that the harpercons don't believe in public support for the arts, as much as they believe in spending billions of dollars to beat us, arrest us on bullshit charges, and then incarcerate us in new super-max prisons which will be built at taxpayers' expense but run (at an exorbitant charge to us) by private sector rackateers. But I'm also certain that the biggest reason the harpercons pulled the funding was because they would be loathe to fund anything which challenges the notion that the "War on Terror" isn't the biggest fraud going.
Apparently, the play, which would have received approximately $890 in federal funds from the Summerworks federal grant, is an uneven thing, which tries to portray the accused terrorist sympathetically, but which doesn't (the reviewers say) glorify terrorism in any way, shape, or form.
But in harper's Canada, anything that doesn't have us belching and hooting in delirious, orgasmic joy at the thought of Canadian soldiers dying for the Karzai government, or acquiescing to the tortures of our fellow citizens in Syrian, Sudanese, or other prisons, simply can't be tolerated.
The Maple Leaf Uber Alles.
I just found out that the festival in question; Summerworks, lost its $47,000 in federal funding. No doubt part of the reason is that the harpercons don't believe in public support for the arts, as much as they believe in spending billions of dollars to beat us, arrest us on bullshit charges, and then incarcerate us in new super-max prisons which will be built at taxpayers' expense but run (at an exorbitant charge to us) by private sector rackateers. But I'm also certain that the biggest reason the harpercons pulled the funding was because they would be loathe to fund anything which challenges the notion that the "War on Terror" isn't the biggest fraud going.
Apparently, the play, which would have received approximately $890 in federal funds from the Summerworks federal grant, is an uneven thing, which tries to portray the accused terrorist sympathetically, but which doesn't (the reviewers say) glorify terrorism in any way, shape, or form.
But in harper's Canada, anything that doesn't have us belching and hooting in delirious, orgasmic joy at the thought of Canadian soldiers dying for the Karzai government, or acquiescing to the tortures of our fellow citizens in Syrian, Sudanese, or other prisons, simply can't be tolerated.
The Maple Leaf Uber Alles.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
The New Homophobia
It's fooking amazing innit?
Have you heard of "The New Anti-Semitism"?
Apparently, when people criticize the IDF for shooting Palestinian children in the back, or the government of Israel for launching an illegal invasion of Gaza or Lebanon and carpet-bombing civilians, it's really just an excuse to indulge in "anti-Semitism." (This is different from the old anti-Semitism because, ... um, those old anti-Semites didn't have Israeli atrocities to use as a cover, ... as if the people committing the atrocities can't ever be legitimately criticized for them.)
But have you heard of "The New Homophobia"?
When homophobic creeps like Ford or Mammoliti start wailing about "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" and political messages at PRIDE, they're really just using it as an excuse to indulge in homophobia. (It's really just the same old homophobia, but the whole brouhaha about QAIA allows me to have fun with two stupid ideas at the same time.)
(That plus the fact that Ford and Mammoliti get turned-on by the idea of shooting Arabs, like all good, upstanding North American "conservatives" do.)
Have you heard of "The New Anti-Semitism"?
Apparently, when people criticize the IDF for shooting Palestinian children in the back, or the government of Israel for launching an illegal invasion of Gaza or Lebanon and carpet-bombing civilians, it's really just an excuse to indulge in "anti-Semitism." (This is different from the old anti-Semitism because, ... um, those old anti-Semites didn't have Israeli atrocities to use as a cover, ... as if the people committing the atrocities can't ever be legitimately criticized for them.)
But have you heard of "The New Homophobia"?
When homophobic creeps like Ford or Mammoliti start wailing about "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" and political messages at PRIDE, they're really just using it as an excuse to indulge in homophobia. (It's really just the same old homophobia, but the whole brouhaha about QAIA allows me to have fun with two stupid ideas at the same time.)
(That plus the fact that Ford and Mammoliti get turned-on by the idea of shooting Arabs, like all good, upstanding North American "conservatives" do.)
Monday, July 4, 2011
Margie Gillis and the War in Afghanistan
Some, some dumb-ass moron at the wingnut welfare news channel was hypocritically bitching and moaning about how Margie Gillis's dance company got $1.2 million over 13 years.
This in a country where the government won't even tell us what it's multi-billion dollar fighter planes and prisons boondoggles are going to cost.
But then, the self-same dumb-ass moron took Ms. Gillis to task for having an opinion about how compassionate Canada is, dredging up the deaths of 150 Canadian soldiers in our fools' errand in Afghanistan as an example of our compassion as a people.
First of all, this shameless exploitation of the troops as a foil for an irrelevant segue from a conversation about arts funding, is truly sickening. Secondly, if we're going to talk about wasted money and treasure and blood, the ten year idiocy in Afghanistan must surely rank up there as among the greatest wastes.
If that dumb-ass teleprompter reader and incoherent ranter could stir herself to read something sensible, she'd know that those 150 Canadian lives were wasted, absolutely wasted, to prop-up one of the most corrupt governments in the world. A torturing, thieving, raping monstrosity, fraudulently elected, and dependent upon mercenaries and foreign troops for its very survival. An occupation has been conducted, ostensibly to defend and expand the rights of women, but after ten years, Afghanistan remains one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.
True, much of the danger stems from the fact of the conflict itself. However, since the conflict itself is the product of the depredations of the corrupt, brutal government, it's hard to fault the insurgents only.
The whole thing is a tragedy. And as Canadian government policy, one of the biggest wastes, one of the biggest clusterfucks. But because it involves the Canadian military actually shooting at people, it's all good with the wingnut welfare receiving, teleprompter reading, ignorant ranting fool at the useless right-wing news channel.
This in a country where the government won't even tell us what it's multi-billion dollar fighter planes and prisons boondoggles are going to cost.
But then, the self-same dumb-ass moron took Ms. Gillis to task for having an opinion about how compassionate Canada is, dredging up the deaths of 150 Canadian soldiers in our fools' errand in Afghanistan as an example of our compassion as a people.
First of all, this shameless exploitation of the troops as a foil for an irrelevant segue from a conversation about arts funding, is truly sickening. Secondly, if we're going to talk about wasted money and treasure and blood, the ten year idiocy in Afghanistan must surely rank up there as among the greatest wastes.
If that dumb-ass teleprompter reader and incoherent ranter could stir herself to read something sensible, she'd know that those 150 Canadian lives were wasted, absolutely wasted, to prop-up one of the most corrupt governments in the world. A torturing, thieving, raping monstrosity, fraudulently elected, and dependent upon mercenaries and foreign troops for its very survival. An occupation has been conducted, ostensibly to defend and expand the rights of women, but after ten years, Afghanistan remains one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.
True, much of the danger stems from the fact of the conflict itself. However, since the conflict itself is the product of the depredations of the corrupt, brutal government, it's hard to fault the insurgents only.
The whole thing is a tragedy. And as Canadian government policy, one of the biggest wastes, one of the biggest clusterfucks. But because it involves the Canadian military actually shooting at people, it's all good with the wingnut welfare receiving, teleprompter reading, ignorant ranting fool at the useless right-wing news channel.
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