Sunday, October 30, 2011

Slandering the Occupiers

You can tell when your opponents in a debate are intellectually bankrupt when they make up lies about you. This isn't just "ad hominem" attacks (by which I mean genuine ones), but lies about you that are directly related to the issue at hand.

Even in the USA and Canada, where there's a constant bombardment of pro-corporate propaganda on a daily basis, the majority of the population agrees with the Occupy Movement. That's probably because the vast majority of people are either in the same boat as the people in the "We Are the 99 Percent" images or they know people who are.

The Tacitus/Trevino site: "We Are the 53%" doesn't resonate quite so well because most sane human beings look at a picture of somebody saying "I've been fucked-over by the system and I'm ten grand in debt and I work two minimum wage jobs and I haven't had a week off in four years, but I'm not complaining." and they think: "There's a stupid chump." and not "My God! What an inspiration!"

But what's even more indicative of their flailing is the way critics of the Occupy Movement have to toss out lies about the occupiers.

"They're unemployed bums who don't want to work."

Um, morons? The majority of the 99 Percent are saying over and over that they're OVER-WORKED.

"They hate America/Canada."

Some of them might. But some of them hate the elites who have dominated our societies since forever but who have, in recent decades, upturned the postwar compromise and dedicated themselves to blatantly fleecing everyone else.

Some of these "anti-American radical lefty lazy-assed haters" are actually veterans who served overseas. It's amazing isn't it though, how chicken-hawk chumps will become so indifferent to the presence of "the troops" when "the troops" don't march in lock-step with the delusions of the chicken-hawk chumps? But that's no surprise. For all their wargasmic enthusiasm for "the troops" while they're blowing away official enemies, US society has, for decades, been indifferent to the persistent over-representation of veterans within the US homeless population. (The same dynamic is at work in Canada, where the federal government began to nickel-and-dime wounded soldiers in order to contain spiralling costs. The fact that the costs were spiralling as a direct result of committing "the troops" to extended combat tours for over a decade didn't seem to factor into their policies. Apparently "the troops" were collectively deciding to milk the system dry by losing limbs or suffering psychological problems from witnessing the horrors of war, and they needed to be brought back in line.)

Yes, yes. A lot of the Occupiers look like the same old crowd of lefty-hippies. They're either poor (and therefore, by definition, "losers") or they're middle-class or wealthy (in which case they're spoiled, elitist "champagne socialists") who can be disregarded. (Do you see how it works? Whereas multi-millionaire drug-addict, Viagara-swilling Rush Limbaugh is a "man of the people"!) These are the same lefty nut-bars who said that free trade deals were going to devastate our economies. Ooops. These are the same lefty nut-bars who said that there were no WMDs. OOps. These are the same lefty nut-bars who said that Afghanistan would be a disaster. OOps. These are the same lefty nut-bars who have always said that there capitalism is inhuman and amoral. Ooops.

But aside from the presence of the people who always turn out to be correct about everything, there are a lot of ordinary US-Americans and Canadians who have just finally realized that the system is rigged against them and who are standing up for themselves. And, as a result, they find themselves slandered and demonized by the scum-bag morons of the bottom of the right-wing barrel.

And the people who are trashing them are either deluded chumps or criminal elites and their lying sycophants. End of story.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Rob Ford and Bill Blair: Two Lying Sacks of Shit?

An "ambush." An "attack."

I, like the folks at Toronto Life was initially sympathetic to Rob Ford's response to his encounter with Marg Delahunty. He said it was dark, people were yelling "We've got you Rob Ford!" He's had some death threats in the past. His six-year old was with him and she was scared.

But it was all lies.

Yes. There was an encounter that morning. It was already bright out. She's a comedienne in costume with a camera crew. (Very few assassins come at you with plastic swords and a film crew.)

Look at the video. He's grimacing and asking if he can get to his car before giving up and stalking back into his house.

Ask yourself: If this woman had just sent his daughter into the house screaming, would this rage-prone fuck-head of an incompetent mayor have been quietly hissing that he just wanted to get into his car? I certainly wouldn't be doing that to someone who had just traumatized my kid.

Do you think Mary Walsh would be pushing on with her Marg Delahunty routine after she'd just sent Ford's daughter shrieking with terror into the house?

Rob Ford is a lying sack of shit. But we already knew that with his (far more important and far more blatant) lying about how he'd cut taxes without cutting services "Guaranteed."

And now he's saying that he didn't berate and curse at the 911 operator. Of course he did. He claims he was swearing but at no one in particular.

Did you see his nauseating, self-pitying orgy of bullshit with the press later? What a contemptible, cowardly, buffoon. "I've been doing a great job running the city." More fucking lies. The police told him to call 911 when he feels threatened? So, you felt genuinely threatened by the camera crew as they were packing up to leave? (He pretends he doesn't even remember whether they were still there when he got back into his car at 8:30 to go to City Hall to fuck up the city some more.)

And of course, his miserable fan-base lap it all up. Stupid shits. These people are shameless liars and self-deluders.

Speaking of which: So Chief Bill Blair, the lying thug, backs up Ford? He listened to the of Ford's 911 call? So fucking what? In the "lying thug" link you can see how worthwhile Blair's interpretation of actual recorded evidence is. Given the fact that Blair's police force is the only city service that didn't have to cut its budget, it isn't outlandish to speculate about collusion (and pressure on the offended 911 operators).

Sorry Rob Ford and Bill Blair. But when you blatantly lie about really important stuff, it destroys your credibility on pretty much everything else.

Post For the Day

Thursday, October 27, 2011

"an arab running around"

From the Montreal Gazette, via pogge: Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian was referred to as an "imminent threat" to Canada's national security by the RCMP in a letter sent to SYRIAN INTELLIGENCE.

At the same time they were spreading outrages claims against him, the RCMP was internally saying:
"O Div. (Ontario Division) task force are presently finding it difficult to establish anything on him other than the fact he is an arab running around."

Almalki discovered this through a federal Access to Information Act request.

Almalki once worked for Human Concern International in under Ahmed Said Khadr, the highest-ranking Canadian in Al Qaeda.

AHA!

Except for this: "National Post Apologizes to Human Concern International"

Human Concern International ("HCI"), an Ottawa-based registered charity, has been supporting the needy both in Canada and elsewhere for the past 23 years. It has never been controlled by the late Ahmed Said Khadr or his family. Khadr was a volunteer with HCI from 1988 to 1995, working in Pakistan on relief and development projects. In 1995, Khadr was arrested in Pakistan on charges of financing a terrorist bombing of the Egyptian embassy to that country. HCI severed all relations with Khadr on Dec. 3, 1995. Khadr returned to Canada after his release and started a separate organization, Health and Education Project International, which has no ties to HCI.

In 2001, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) alleged that Mr. Khadr had used his position with HCI to funnel money for terrorist purposes. HCI has consistently denied that any money was funnelled through its organization for terrorist purposes, and has advised the National Post that it is willing to open its books for inspection by any interested government agency. The National Post has no reason to believe that there is evidence of any misuse of HCI funds to support terrorism. HCI itself has never been accused of terrorism or of supporting terrorism. The Post has no reason to believe that any of its other volunteers or staff have been accused of terrorism or of supporting terrorism.

Incorrect information appeared in an editorial in the National Post of March 6. The National Post apologizes to HCI, its board of directors, volunteers and donors for any harm or embarrassment its errors may have caused.

Almalki also sold two-way radio equipment to Microelectronics, a company controlled by the Pakistani military (and a US ally at the time). This store-bought equipment was all exported legally in compliance with Canadian regulations.

The donut chomping desk jockeys at CSIS and the RCMP really ought to have more on a Canadian citizen before they start shooting off their mouths to foreign intelligence agencies, don't you think? Because they DESTROYED Almalki's life and got him subjected to over a year's worth of torture in a Syrian prison. And the piece-of-shit harpercon regime still refuses to acknowledge the Canadian government's responsibility for any of this. Miserable lying cowards.

YouTube Embed of Early Mitch Hedberg

He was an ordinary dude. He seemed to be a nice guy. He made people laugh and most of the time the laughter wasn't at anyone's expense. He seemed genuinely surprised at his enormous success. I really wish that I'd known about him before he died ...

Monday, October 24, 2011

Silly Things About Qaddafi's Death

So, as I said, Qaddafi was a dictator who practised torture (which I oppose more than your average North American) and who was most definitely nutso. All that having been said, he had been (and maybe still was) an authentic Arab nationalist. Even if that Arab nationalism was in his past it was still enough to make him a target for Western imperialists (which is what every "humanitarian intervention" is all about).

So, he's was a grade-A, certified OFFICIAL ENEMY and therefore it's cool to hate him and kill him and then lie about it afterwards and say stupid things about him.

Here's the lying bit: I'm in "Shwarma's King" on Yonge Street making an order and they've always got CNN blaring in the background and I'm watching the footage of Qaddafi's last moments (the pretty anchorwoman cautions me that these images may be "disturbing") which I'd seen already.

So there's the old guy, already dazed and bloody, being manhandled by a group of rebels, and there's all sorts of shouting in Arabic, and he's getting bashed around pretty good, and then get this: The CNN anchor says (as if it's a genuine possibility) that maybe Qaddafi was shot in the head execution style (like she says the guys in the later video footage with their arms around each other glorifying in the fact that they shot him in the head are saying) OR he was killed in a "crossfire" (as Libya's current Prime Minister is saying). This is even more obviously stupid lying that bush II and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney's garbage about Saddam Hussein's WMDs was. The reason CNN and other of the system's mouthpieces are saying this is just to provide cover (however insultingly ludicrous) to their war crimes.

Before that, I'm walking by a "National Pest" newspaper box (like I'd ever buy that piece of shit!) and I see a headline about Qaddafi and the "psychology of dictators." I can't be bothered to read it. It's no doubt some armchair psychoanalysis from some dimwit. I'll respect those fuckers when they print front-page stories about the childhood trauma and inherent mental deficiencies that explains the callous selfishness and stupidity of bush II, or the (probably fascinating) reasons behind the amoral, arrogant cynicism and shameless hypocrisy of Barack Obama.

Exult in your "triumph" dip-shitz. Then, hopefully it's back to the larger project of fucking-over all your fellow human beings on the planet in the service of your deluded political economic project. The "success" of which project will eventually drag us all down so that there are no bullets in your soldiers' guns and no airplane fuel for your fighter-jets and then god help you all.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Grip Glutz vs The Sensual Santa

Today, my contribution to the cause is to clean out the rotting stuff from my fridge; empty my compost bin; learn the skill of punctuation; and do almost a week's worth of dishes.

Last night I went to listen to Seth interview Daniel Clowes (whose original comic story "Art-School Confidential" had me in tears the first time I read it) at the Harbourfront Centre's International Festival of Authors.

During the audience Q & A that followed the talk I got to ask who would win in a battle between the Sensual Santa and Grip Glutz. Clowes thought that it would be a helluva wrestling match, but that Sensual Santa would win. (I thought it might be the other way around, but he's the God of Eightball so he should know.)

Friday, October 21, 2011

On the death of Mommar Qaddafi

Some guy came up to me on the street tonight and told me out of nowhere that Qaddafi was dead. I asked him: "Who's next? Obama?"

The guy says: "No. Raoul and his brother, what's his name? Castro!"

There's a guy trained to hate the official enemies. I was in a hurry to get to the liquor store so I let him pass.

In his short career, Obama has killed more people than Fidel Castro. Maybe even more than Qaddafi.

I'm undecided about Qaddafi. People I respect say he really was crazy. There's no question he was a dictator. I haven't studied his regime too closely because most of the readily available sources will be pro-USA propaganda, ... which is to say, useless bullshit.

Whatever his faults (and I'm sure there are people, ordinary Libyans, who are justifiably happy that he's dead), Qaddafi didn't die because he was a dictator.

He died because (at one time anyway) he was a genuine Arab-African nationalist.

If he'd been a complete USA stooge he could have boiled his political enemies alive on state television and he'd have been safe from US "justice."

And, the biggest threat to MY freedom wasn't Qaddafi. It's the US government. Working through their puppets in Ottawa.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

The world is run by crazy people, so fight back!

Now, for the record, "The world is run by crazy people" is also something said by the disgusting KKKate Makkkmillan of smalldeadbraincells infamy.

But KKKate is the sort of person who would wonder why you spat in her face after she called for the re-opening of the residential schools and who believed that Iraq had WMDs.

It's also believed by people like kryntgathf-adfadf, who trolls at Dr. Dawg's blog.

But kdrerayf-asdlfkj also believes that if politicians in a government commit war crimes, they can be absolved from their war crimes if they win a subsequent election. (There's an extended "debate" about this asinine contention in the comments section.)

So, who cares what those miserable deluded shit-heads think? They're part of the bad craziness that I'm talking about.

Let's pause to remember (since all the assholes who talk about Iran, Libya, Syria, etc., fail to remind us) that the handsome, articulate, intelligent President Barack Obama has given himself the power to declare anyone a terrorist and kill them and their children with impunity.

That's fucking crazy.

Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a “threat,” without due process of law.
In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.
...
This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two “enemies of the people” have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty.

We Canadians have a government with a finance minister whose projections for the government's finances were off by over $50 billion and they campaigned on their economic competence.

They altered government documents, lied to Parliament about it, refused to tell Parliament how much their policies would cost, and shut-down Parliament twice (once to evade responsible government, and the second time was to shut-down an inquiry into the possibility that they are complicit in war crimes) and then they went on to win a majority government through the ignorance or authoritarianism of more than a quarter of the voters!

And, now, proof is out that NAFTA has been a disaster:
NAFTA has become an international example of severe structural problems in the food chain, from how it produces its food to what and how much (or how little) it consumes.
Mexican malnutrition has its roots in the way NAFTA and other neoliberal programs forced the nation to move away from producing its own basic foods to a “food security” model. “Food security” posits that a country is secure as long as it has sufficient income to import its food. It separates farm employment from food security and ignores unequal access to food within a country.
The idea of food security based on market access comes directly from the main argument behind NAFTA of “comparative advantage.” Simply stated, economic efficiency dictates that each country should devote its productive capacity to what it does best and trade liberalization will guarantee access across borders.
Under the theory of comparative advantage, most of Mexico was deemed unfit to produce its staple food crop, corn, since its yields were way below the average for its northern neighbor and trade partner. Therefore, Mexico should turn to corn imports and devote its land to crops where it supposedly had a comparative advantage, such as counter-seasonal and tropical fruits and vegetables.
Sounds simple. Just pick up three million inefficient corn producers (and their families) and move them into manufacturing or assembly where their cheap labor constitutes a comparative advantage. The cultural and human consequences of declaring entire peasant and indigenous communities obsolete were not a concern in this equation.
Seventeen years after NAFTA, some two million farmers have been forced off their land by low prices and the dismantling of government supports. They did not find jobs in industry. Instead most of them became part of a mass exodus as the number of Mexican migrants to the United States rose to half a million a year. In the first few years of NAFTA, corn imports tripled and the producer price fell by half.
But our elites like watching millions of people starve so it's all good. And we're all too busy doing nothing really to stop it.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Egg-zack-a-lak-a-lak-a-lee!

Good ol' pogge lays it down:
For going on six years now we've had a federal government that has consistently demonstrated contempt for democratic principles and institutions. The same group is back in power and we'll have no opportunity to unseat them until 2015. It's generally acknowledged that of the newspaper editorial boards that endorsed a party, over 90% of them endorsed the Conservatives even while less than 40% of voters did. Perhaps Hebert should consider the possibility that the current demonstrations are as much for her benefit and for the benefit of her colleagues as for the benefit of politicians.
Read da ol' ting.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

I'm Part of "Occupy Toronto"

Just saying. In case anyone wonders. I'm working, so my participation will be spotty. But I was down there on Sunday night and I was taking part in meetings this morning. For all the reasons I've been saying. There is a global sanity movement, instigated by the total failure of neoliberalism and by the looming ecological catastrophes of industrialization and (to a great degree) capitalism itself.

If people are gathering around this nucleus, then I have to be a part of it. Things must change and we must make them change.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Criticisms of the Occupations of the Financial Districts

I was initially skeptical of Occupy Wall Street when I first heard about it. It seemed like a small gathering of the faithful with yet another pointless short-term expression of protest. But it's inexplicably been allowed to continue and, thanks to the inherent brutality of the NY Pig Department ("Awwww! Some of us ain't all so bad! It hurts to read this anti-cop bigotry! We might get so mad we'll pepper-spray your eyes and then bash your fucking head in!"), it's garnered a lot of publicity. Over half the American public supports Occupy Wall Street. (Contrast that to the 27% that has a favourable impression of the Tea-Bagger Party; essentially tea-baggers liking themselves!) I still wonder what the occupiers in the various cities want to accomplish. I wonder how they imagine that murderous, psychopathic greed-heads will make important concessions to a peaceful sit-in. What I don't wonder about, is whether Occupy Wall Street is right, or whether they're justified. I also don't trouble myself with nonsensical worries as to whether they're violent crazies out to destroy all that is good and true.

"What are they protesting about?" (Asks Glenn Greenwald sarcastically)

Seriously? A massive recession, caused by private greed and criminality, and bailed-out by the public at the cost of education and social programs?
I think becomes clear is that growing wealth and income inequality, by itself, would not spark massive protests if there were a perception that the top 1% (more accurately thought of as the top .1%) had acquired their gains honestly and legitimately. Americans in particular have been inculcated for decades with the belief that even substantial outcome inequality is acceptable (even desirable) provided that it is the by-product of fairly applied rules. What makes this inequality so infuriating (aside from the human suffering it is generating) is precisely that it is illegitimate: it is caused and bolstered by decisively unfair application of laws and rules, by undemocratic control of the political process by the nation’s oligarchs, and by a full-scale shield of immunity that allows them — and only them — to engage in the most egregious corruption and even criminality without any consequence (other than a further entrenching of their prerogatives and ill-gotten gains).

Anyone who expressed difficulty seeing or understanding what motivates these protests revealed many things about themselves. None is flattering.
Speaking of which; here's a comment from a mouth-breathing cretin, "sad but true" at Dr. Dawg's:
An alternative take would be that the occupy movement is just your standard socialist protest rally with limited appeal beyond the usual audience, and that they have generally missed the essential point, that leftist notions of entitlement are themselves largely responsible for the global financial crisis, so that what we see is actually a sort of self-flagellation of the failed offspring of the entitled classes, unable to come to terms with the fact that the promised Obama unicorn was not there waiting for them as a prize for their radical politics. Much of the world will choose to ignore these protests. Each country has its own day of reckoning ahead for the financial arrangements they have tolerated, there may not be much transferability from nation to nation. But a gaggle of incoherent street youth and perennial complainers have no real message and will fade away with the end of the autumn weather. I don't see anyone protesting links between big corporations and the government of the PRC, for example. Why not? Wrong ideology! But that's where the problems really exist, the draining out of wealth to the hive state organized by socialism is what we need to fight against, not wealth itself. In any case, the entitled classes want to be wealthy without working for it. That's a dead end under any kind of political leadership.
I replied to the dunce to the effect that, actually, Wall Street caused the financial crisis, and that millions of US-Americans are angry not because their welfare cheques haven't grown at twice the rate of inflation, but because they're being downsized, they're losing their homes, they're working several shitty jobs at once, they're drowning in medical and student-loan debt, and their whole political class is comprised of the puppets of the same banksters who caused the recession that finally pulled the plug on their ability to survive. (This "sad but true" character would probably fit in quite well with the "53%'rs" whose motto seems to be: "We're chumps, but we haven't yet been destroyed by health care bills so it's all good.")

Here's Chris Hedges asking some more questions to try to help shit-heads such as "sad but true" focus:
What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically Linkbankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?
The present political-economic system has failed and is failing. And it is killing the planet. Even if the OWS protesters are a despised minority (and it appears that they are not), they are still right, and we ignore them at our specie's peril.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Trevino's "Tacitus"

So, "A Tiny Revolution" has two posts.

One introduces us to this group "The 53%" and compares the stoops showcasing themselves in it to the Roman-worshipping prisoner in "Monty Python's 'Life of Brian'" which is pretty funny.

In the second post, he points out how "The 53%" (of people who make enough to pay taxes and who differentiate themselves from those of their fellow 99% who aren't billionaires through this awesome achievement) is the brainabortion of "Red State's" Erik Erikson and Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Trevino used to host a right-wing discussion board called "Tacitus." I used to post there under the pseudonym "smartz." That's why my e-mail is "smartzeethwap." ("smartz" was the pseudonym of a late-night computer trivia contestant at a bar I was in once. Around about midnight we all noticed that "smartz" wasn't answering any questions. We looked around and found some guy passed out at the bar using the trivia game box as his pillow. We tried yelling at him: "Smartz! Wake up! You're missing the game!" to no avail.)

"Tacitus" was pretty good in that you weren't allowed to use profanity and you had to provide sources for your claims if challenged. It ran during the lead-up and first couple of years into the bush II war on Iraq (which was based on lies).

I suspect that the reason Trevino took it down was because so many bright, articulate right-wingers were documented believing all the stupid drivel about Saddam's WMDs and predicting what a roaring success the occupation (which turned out to be an evil clusterfuck) would turn out to be. Mustn't leave evidence of one's own titanic stupidity and ignorance.

Anyways, it appears Trevino hasn't learned his lesson. He'll eventually have to take down his "53%" thing to, as more and more of its posters sink into economic penury.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Whatever Happens, Failure is Failure

And neoliberalism has failed, is failing, will continue to fail.

Treating the earth as both a resource to be strip-mined and as a toilet for our increasing production of toxic garbage is a literal dead-end.

Treating other human beings as an expense and demanding that they justify their existences according to the value of financial profit is inhumane and self-evidently self-destructive to the cause of humanity in general.

The anger boiling over across the Middle East, in Greece, in Ireland, in Iceland, in the USA will spread. It's already toppled governments in South America.

Look at the way that the elites are doubling down on the failed policies now. Trying to grab more from a shrinking economy from the people who have taken it on the chin for decades now, as a result of their failed policies.

Our elites are deluded and they cannot change. Their only instincts are to make things worse. Therefore, the anger will grow.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Don't Be a Stupid Chump!

That's it.



That's all I got time for today.

Monday, October 10, 2011

"We will continue to sit here in the rain and get pepper-sprayed ..."

... until you send a big horde of cops in here to disperse us, or you crack and give up all your power."

"The fact that we don't have any leadership or plans is a strength!"

I'm not asking for a Lenin or a Che to take control of "Occupy Wall Street" but could we have a serious conversation about how just camping out in a park and getting harassed by the cops constitutes a genuine rebellion?

Could somebody explain to me just HOW it is a sign of strength to have nothing more than a list of complaints and a vague demand for "justice" and nothing else?

Seriously. Is the sit-in supposed to gradually spread until there are millions of people sitting in the downtown cores of US-American cities? Really? Is that it?

Saturday, October 8, 2011

I Couldn't Agree More

The need to describe things as they are:

Aware that the use of carefully tested, innocuous sounding euphemisms is the cornerstone of the corporate and military “perception management” campaigns, I have made a great effort to be stark and simple in my descriptions. When people anywhere get killed by others, I call it murder. When countries that have done nothing to us get invaded I call it wanton aggression and compare it to other times in recent history when countries suffered the unprovoked losses of sovereignty. I refer to people as “war criminals” who have gone on TV and admitted planning and carrying out, well, war crimes.

The hope, of course, is to encourage people to transcend the normalizing rhetoric craftily employed by the powers that be and begin use their empathetic imaginations, to ask what it would be like to be the person sent away forever with no charges, to watch your country destroyed for having done absolutely nothing to the country of the invaders, to be beaten by cops for no reason other than you wish to exercise the most basic of democratic rights, to live in a place where the wealthy own not only the corporations you work in, but most of the venues where you might want to express yourself freely as an individual. In other words, the goal is to have people contemplate and in some sense feel the reality and magnitude of what being done in their name.

Friday, October 7, 2011

The Tyranny of the Status quo

Well, at least McGuinty was reduced to a minority (albeit a large one). What to say? What to say?

People in Ontario didn't care that Tim Hudak is a stupid version of Mike Harris (amazing ain't it?). The Ontario PC's scored about the same as they've done for years. Biggest disaster in our province's history, or at least a close second to Mitch Hepburn.

They don't care about the hapless Liberals who have responded to Ontario's falling to have-not status on their watch with blubbering excuses about the unfairness of the equalization formula. (People! The formula is the same one that saw you making payments to the rest of Canada as a "have" province! De-industrialization has happened and it's killing us and you just want to find excuses???)

Ontarians don't care about McGuinty secretly (oh, but only temporarily and in a limited area) taking away their civil rights with the Public Works Protection Act. They don't care about massive police brutality. They don't care about ...

Ah! But I wasn't excited by this election either. I honestly didn't care if it was McGuinty or Hudak. And I wasn't excited by the ONDP who are moving to the centre-right when the times call for moving leftwards.

In the midst of some of the biggest assaults on citizens' rights during one of the greatest failures of capitalism, those who vote vote for more of the same. Those who didn't vote, ... I suspect they were just living their lives, oblivious to the importance politics plays in their lives. (It wasn't like you'd get a sense of that from watching the politicians though.)

Thursday, October 6, 2011

I Voted ...

... for the NDP.

I haven't written too much about this provincial election because I'm not writing much of anything these days and because I'm not excited by it.

I voted against the buffoonery of Tim Hudak. I voted against the murderous incompetence of the Ontario PC's.

I voted against the robotic Dalton McGuinty. I voted against the corporate sludge behind the Public Works Protection Act.

I voted for the ONDP because of the tuition freeze and the transit promises. I voted in spite of their dedication to the carbon economy.

But I was mostly voting against something, rather that FOR the least-bad option.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Where is the Tea Party During "Occupy Wall Street"?

Oh well, maybe some of the groups behind "Occupy Wall Street" are dangerous!

Of course, these "Tea Party" chumps never heard of the Koch brothers.

Ah, who's kidding who?

The "Tea Party" are a bunch of ignorant chumps whose deluded ravings are funded by corporate US-America because, in their ignorance, what they want works out to be the same thing that corporate US-America wants.

Now, maybe Glen Beck is crazy enough to be brave enough to go down to Wall Street, ... but I doubt it.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

International Food Rationing

It's an idea whose time has come!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Nazis and Tea-Party Republicans - What's the Difference?

Some people have said that human civilization has tipped over the precipice. (Right-wing trolls gibber idiotically about nothing in particular.)

Watching the spectacle of the Repugnicans, ... sorry, the Republican Party of the USA pandering to the death-happy, blood-lusting, Christo-fascist sludge of the Koch Brothers' "Tea-Party," I'm forced to think of the thick-necked, red-faced, thuggish, racist, incoherent yammering stooges of the German Nazi Party seig-heiling their way into Germany's cataclysm of hatred and destruction.

(Oh, I know, I know, "Godwin's Law" and all that. But if I'm going to be called a Stalinist-Nazi all the time, I figure I should just come out and say it.)

Anyway, ... that aside, I will concede one important difference between the present Tea-Party Republican Party and the Nazis. This being that the Nazis were able to lift Germany out of the Great Depression (at least temporarily), whereas the Tea-Party Repugs are merrily dragging their country (and everyone else) into another Great Depression.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Disaster of the harper Majority is Becoming Clear

I've already said that harper's winning a majority after having demonstrated contempt for all the fundamentals of parliamentary democracy was a major indictment of our political culture.

I'm just saying now that the omnibus crime bill, Tony Clement's arrogant disregard for his misuse of federal funds (to buy votes in his riding), and all the other stinking messes that are coming down the pipe, ... the gravity of the situation is making itself felt.

I'm not going to blame Liberals or Dippers. We didn't want to work together for very good reasons. Our culture and our history is what it is and we are what we are and we have what we have.

The people to blame, even if we have some disparaging words for our fellow citizens too lazy, ignorant, or apathetic to vote, are the dullards and assholes who voted "Conservative." They've shown that they're failures as citizens. All of them.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

I REALLY Hate My Wife and I Wish She Was Dead!!

Ha-ha-ha!

I don't go "The Galloping Beaver" so much anymore. There's some good contributors to that blog, but lately it seems like it's "Edstock"'s private blog. Here's the "joke" printed at that link:

The wife has been missing a week now.

Police said to prepare for the worst.

So, I went to the thrift shop to get all of her clothes back.
I've always found this source of humour to be extremely tedious. Everybody laughing at comedians who say how husbands and wives hate each other. If you hate each other so much, divorce. It's fucking pathetic. Don't wish each other dead. Christ, I just can't understand it. Much less making a joke based on the possible murder of one's spouse. It's kinda disgusting really.

"Edstock" was on a roll this week. Commenting on an embedded YouTube video of a girl flipping an attempted assailant over her head, "Edstock" has this to say about the virtues of teaching self-defense:

The point is, especially if you are female, unless you were so ugly as a child your parents had to tie a pork chop around your neck to get the dog to play with you, learning how to fight for real is a depressingly desirable skill.
Yes. Because "ugly" girls are immune from the threat of rape, right? "Ugly" girls never get assaulted for any reason. Who gives a shit about "ugly" girls anyway? They're useless. (Well, maybe they can be good cooks or something. "If you want to be happy for the rest of you life ..."

Language like that really isn't "progressive."

"Edstock" occasionally posts some decent stuff regarding working class economics. But I don't care. There's too much idiocy about weapons (which one uses to "take-out" criminal scum), or about how Arab women should show some skin for Chrissakes, or how the Palestinians in Hamas, or the guys in Hezbollah are just strutting morons, fighting Israel for no reason except that they hate Jews and haven't figured out that they're getting their asses kicked.

And if you call the guy on any of this shit, he replies with some stock phrases that tickled his fancy twenty years ago: "If you throw dirt, you lose ground," coupled with an uncanny ability to miss the point.

Anyhoo, ... I just had to vent.