Blind Optimism

Most people think it's all going to be all right. People who go through life thinking the worst will happen are labeled "pessimists." Life requires optimism. You don't deliberately have children if you're thinking about everything that could go wrong.

Also, we stumble through politics thinking it's all going to be all right. Most people, watching the TV news, hope that "something" will fix the mess that "the politicians" have gotten them into. Perhaps they'll "throw the bums out" and their replacements will be better, even though "they're all the same." These, mind you, are Canadians with jobs. They'll grumble and complain and they'll occasionally get ripped-off, but they'll keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and they'll soldier on.

Who knows? I'm sure there are many NDP'r's who genuinely believe that Mulcair has a shot at being prime minister. And, when election night is over, and they find the NDP relegated to third-party status again, they'll dry their eyes, clear their throats, stand up straight and proud and continue the fight.

(And Liberals, who have a party with the support of large elements of the moneyed classes, occasionally see their corporatist leaders elevated to national leadership, they clap and cheer with tears of joy in their eyes, and suffer all the inevitable betrayals of their values by said leadership with a grim determination to keep plugging away.)

Street protesters convince themselves that their little demonstrations matter, and so they do them, god bless 'em!

But the same attitude informs the wealthy and the powerful. They're in charge. They're history's "makers" and they make things happen. Of course, being greedy, selfish, ignorant psychopaths, much of what they make happen has terrible consequences. The oil sector is driving civilization to suicide. They and other imperialists are destroying civilization in the Middle East. Obama (advised by psychotic imbeciles such as Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland) believes that a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China can work out because, well, ... things have a way of working themselves out. Don't they?

The elites can destroy the economy for the quite rational purpose of destroying the last vestiges of power of the working class and it won't end in tears because, well, everything will work out okay in the end, won't it?

And, when you're living in mansions, and driving expensive cars (or being chauffeured in limousines) and eating delicious meals in the best restaurants, ... it's hard not to think that things will work themselves out. It'll be all right.

How much of this thinking informed the July Crisis of 1914? How much of this thinking was behind the stock-market speculations of 1929? How much of elite complacency dragged-out the Great Depression and spawned Hitler?

Ah! But we got through it all didn't we?

The Pervasiveness of Right-Wing Garbage Culture

I have no idea who those two people (in the picture above of two young news anchors - in case the image is lost later) are, other than that they're news anchors. I put them up there because I wonder just how so many Canadians can be supportive of the draconian police-state bill C-51, and, indeed, the whole Great Bullshit War on Terror (GBWT). Even initially. Even if just at first glance. And I'm moved to speculate that it might be two things: Television news and the ranting of "Crazy Uncle Liberty." (This is the right-wing relative who emails you shit about the Muslims and about Justin Trudeau and David Suzuki, or who loudly holds forth at family get-togethers and what-not.)

You can't truly fault the print media for the collective ignorance and stupidity that elevates terrorism to be a greater threat to Canadians' safety than right-wing politicians and their capitalist masters. This is a simple fact, based on the numbers. And, the one time that the terrorists DID kill a lot of Canadians, CSIS and the RCMP shrugged their shoulders and so did the government. That was the Air India bombings by Sikh terrorists. I think racism explains the general official apathy on that one. Just as I think that racism partly explains the official hysteria on Islamic terrorists. But, anyway, while there are a disproportionate amount of democracy-hating elite scum writing columns in newspapers, the majority of print columnists, from Andrew Coyne to Linda McQuaig, have been pretty consistent in their trashing of harper and his contempt for democracy. Besides, relatively few people read newspapers nowadays. The editorial endorsements of right-wing newspaper owners can't account for all that much in the general public's embrace of nonsensical ideas.

I don't watch the television much at all. But when I do see the news, it's often CNN, or the local call-in show at Hamilton's CHCH. And I get the impression that television news gives a much more right-wing view of the world than what you get in the newspapers.

Combine this with emails about Obama's birth certificate, or David Suzuki's corruption and hypocrisy, from Crazy Uncle Liberty, and you've got yourself a country where the majority of the population supports allowing CSIS and the RCMP to spy on everyone, without oversight, so that people in Kenora or Kamloops can feel safe from the non-existent threat of terrorism.

(Tell me; do any of YOU get emails from your Crazy Uncle Liberty? Do YOU send out unsolicited political emails to your friends and family and co-workers?)

harper Debating Trudeau? and Tax Revolt!

This was a picture of Elisha Cuthbert. I thought about a picture of Justin Trudeau but I thought a Canadian actress would be much more random. Now it's gone. Tuff shit.

 
PART A

I saw a headline somewhere that the harpercon political hacks are weighing the idea of getting their boy in the debating ring with Justin Trudeau. The logic being that JT is such a pretty-boy airhead that the "experienced" stephen harper will make him look like a fool.

I happen to think it's a great idea! First of all, it shows that harper is terrified of the idea of a match against Mulcair. Second of all, ... it just shows how completely out-to-lunch the harpercons are. Just what "experience" does harper have that is at all relevant?? Sure, harper's "experienced" a lot of things in his several years in power, but let's face it, debating isn't one of them.

harper hides from debates. Pretty much all the time. Or he shows up in Question Period and utters bald-faced lies and useless generalities, secure in the knowledge that his tame poodle Speaker Scheer won't call him on them.

Aside from sitting and keeping a straight face while Peter Mansbridge blows him, harper doesn't sit and take questions. he's a fucking coward and, at the end of the day, he really isn't all that bright.

And finally, on this topic, I am goddamned sick and tired over how good-looking people like Justin Trudeau, Paulina Gretzky, me, Elisha Cuthbert, et al., are discriminated against as being air-heads (actually, i have no idea if Ms. Cuthbert has suffered such a slight). I think JT should just go in against harper guns-blazing. Because if he listens too much to his handlers he'll be so nervous that he'll appear unready, and it will work in harper's favour. He should just say what he feels and he'll either look like an idiot (which will help the NDP) or he'll fuck-up harper's shit and cause the doofus to say something that will reveal the hollow man filled to bursting with toxic goop that he is.

PART B

If, god forbid, harper steals another majority, or wins a minority that the opposition would be too ignorant, stupid and cowardly to topple, ... I suggest that we lay the groundwork for a nationwide tax-revolt against him.

I've been saying for a long time that achieving anything major against the elites requires shit-loads of foundation building. First, you have figure out where their vulnerabilities are. (And, sorry, but it bears repeating that twenty activists freezing in the cold for an hour outside a government building doesn't really get at anything vulnerable.) Then you have to get as many people as you can onside.

Let me just put it out there that there are a lot of Canadians who pay taxes who hate stephen harper and his anti-democratic, inhuman policies. harper has long ago forfeited his right to govern us. Get everyone onside with the idea of a nation-wide tax-revolt against harper. Tax-time comes around 2016, and harper's in power? Don't do your taxes. Just don't do 'em. The mother-fucker steals elections, withholds cost estimates, rams through omnibus bill after omnibus bill with his stolen power? Don't support it. Don't pay your taxes.

It's your right, nay, your duty, as a citizen in a quasi-democracy, to withhold financial support for usurpers.

The Sickening Absurdity

That's how i feel about the world right now.

Special Agent stephen harper

The corrupt, unelected "prime minister," stephen harper, was livid. he would screech through his gritted teeth in frustration that so many Canadians were mocking him for what he thought was the cool expertise with which he applied his RCMP "training" when that crazed gunman attacked Parliament Hill.

Knowing that his Conservative Party colleagues were all useless, expendable and replaceable, harper didn't even tell them what he was doing as he skittered for the door of the closet attached to the caucus meeting room. Silently (so as not to alert his traumatized fellow "conservatives") he turned the door knob, opened the door and dashed inside, closing the door quietly behind him.

There he sat in the comforting darkness as the noises of gunfire echoed off the hard surfaces of the marble hall outside the meeting room. Applying an individual touch to his "training" harper emitted a warm stream of piss into his trousers as his fevered brain imagined a whole cadre of Ay-rab Moozlumm fanatics, armed with AK-47s running around (to no purpose) shooting wildly in every direction. (Neither CSIS, nor the RCMP had informed him of the existence of any terrorist organization in Canada with this capability, but harper thought it a good use of his "training" to imagine the most frightening, ludicrous dangers possible as he pushed himself further into the back corner of the closet.)

Eventually the shooting stopped. It was all over. Either the attack was over and the terrorists were either killed or had conquered Parliament Hill and Ottawa was now a satellite capital of the new Caliphate under the sway of ISIS and the preserved brain of Osama bin Laden.

harper sat quietly in the darkness. Soon he could hear his colleagues' voices, speaking low, wondering if it was safe now. Then he began to hear "Where's Mr. harper?" and "Where's the prime minister?" harper smiled slyly to himself:

"That's right! Wouldn't you like to know! If you knew where I was and the terrorists burst in, you'd tell them in a second! Wouldn't you? You'd cravenly say - 'He's in the closet over there! Oh please don't kill me Mr. Big Mean Terrorist! I've served you well! I've betrayed my leader! Spare me!'"

harper's mind continued to play-out this scenario. Either the Conservative MP who blabs his secret is dispatched with a bullet, or their miserable life is spared, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that heavy footsteps approach the closet door, it is pulled open and harper's startled eyes behold a towering figure of a gunman, silhouetted in the door frame from the light from the meeting room.

harper was unable to stop the terrified whine that escaped his throat as his nightmare fantasy became too much for his fragile psyche.

Now he could hear those idiots, he could picture their heads turning towards the closet. "What was that?" they asked. "Is he ...", "I think he's in the closet!"

At that moment, harper desperately hoped the shooting would start again and that all of those hypocritical stupid assholes would be slaughtered. And then, of course, the gunman would leave, never having noticed the closet door. And then everything would be all right again.

But it was not to be. harper continued to sit, huddled in the corner of the closet as the cretins became more and more certain of his whereabouts. "Is he there?" "He has to be there." "Did anyone see him go ..." "I didn't." It became excruciating. They kept making idiotic suggestions to each other and harper found himself unable to move. Unable to force himself to stand on his own two feet and exit the closet of his own volition and spare himself the embarrassment of ... TOO LATE!

They opened the door to find him cowering on the floor at the back of the closet. he could tell from their eyes, the confusion, the hurt, the scorn, ... none of those fools knew a professionally trained hero when they saw one. What would happen to Canada without harper's steady hand on the tiller? he would have allowed them all to be killed to save himself and thereby his country! he would have kissed the terrorists' feet and sucked their dicks if necessary. To survive! To live! Thats the main thing! To live to fight again!!!!

Somehow, beneath this shell of pathetic rationalizations, harper realized how revolting he was. he wanted to call his mommy. Over the next days and weeks, harper gradually decided that the only way he would NEVER find himself in such a situation, ever again, was to give CSIS the powers to spy on everybody, all the time, for anything. Besides, weren't environmentalists all leftists? And don't leftists love terrorists? Monitor 'em all! And when CSIS finds something out, IT STRIKES!!! No waiting for the RCMP! No warrants! No busybody bureaucrat standing in the way of harper's safety!

For some reason, this line of thinking always causes harper to cry.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Creative writing assignment: Imagine the self-pitying rationalizations and blubbering going on inside Dean Del Mastro's brain as the fraudster awaits his sentencing.

Why didn't stephen harper attend debates in the House of Commons on his "Stasi-in-Canada" bill?Answer: He's a fucking pants-pissing coward. He was afraid that he'd shit his pants if Mulcair asked him a hard question and he was also consumed with the fear that the "Islamists" who populate his paranoid mind might attack the legislature as this important piece of legislation was being discussed.

On both those days, harper was in his office, curled up in a fetal position, weeping shamelessly.

It remains a simple fact that "conservatives" in Canada have killed WAY MORE Canadians than have any terrorists.

Imagine how stupid you'd have to be to be a Canadian, living in a small town, north of the Great Lakes, and one reason you'd vote for the harpercons is that you support their hysterical stance on terrorism!

Finally, ... we should all form committees of independent, unaffiliated folks, and strategize on how to harass the harpercon candidates in the upcoming federal election. Mercilessly, on camera, and posted widely on social media.

Interview With Peter MacKay (cont'd)

Continued from here. (I got lazy about transcribing.) We're talking about Peter MacKay's admiration for some of the values of New Brunswick gunman Justin Borque who killed 3 RCMP officers ...

thwap: What were these admirable values in your estimation?

JMPM: Liberty, personal freedom. The military.

thwap: That's it? That's pretty vague. I seem to recall his also being a racist.

JMPM: Well, now that you mention it, it's a little strange that you're so fixated on labeling white people as terrorists, when you ignore the cultural aspects of entire groups of people that make them, ... all of them, legitimate targets for surveillance.

thwap: What are you talking about?

JMPM: Anarchists, First Nations terrorists, those cop-haters protesting against the legal system in the United States ...

thwap: Wait a minute! People protesting against police brutality are "cop-haters" but right-wing gun-nuts who actually kill them are misguided individuals?

JMPM: It's a simple fact; when police go into mainly white neighbourhoods, they're not made to feel as unwelcome outsiders.

thwap: Well, that's obviously because of racism ...

JMPM: Fighting crime isn't "racist." The main killer of young black men in the United States is other young black men. Not cops. But that doesn't square with your desire to blame everything on the police. And more and more police officers aren't even white to begin with. Your whole view of the world is ridiculous!

thwap: That whole "black-on-black" crime thing has already been thoroughly debunked. 85% of whites are killed by other whites. People tend to kill people they associate with. If you want to pretend that the justice system in the USA 
isn't slanted against blacks, or that Canada's isn't slanted against Aboriginals ...

JMPM: There it is! Even after Caledonia! Even after Ipperwash! Despite all the illegal blockades and burning police cars in New Brunswick!

thwap: It's amazing. You actually share the same garbage theories as your most blinkered ideological soul-mates! You actually believe that the First Nations enjoy "two-tier justice" in their favour!

JMPM: And all the corrupt band chiefs, who would go to prison in the real world, for theft and embezzlement. But they get to stay in power because they're "sovereign nations" and their people would rather blame Canada for all their problems.

thwap: Back when you still, ... when that meat-head Stockwell Day was justice minister, there was a report that showed that First Nations individuals were arrested more, given harsher sentences, and spent more time in solitary when in prison, than any other group.

JMPM: I don't believe that's the case.

thwap: That's just what Stockwell Day said. [It's true, keep reading down into the post, only if you want to. It's there.] Supposedly, government agencies like the Office of the Correctional Investigator write annual reports full of completely bogus facts, just to push their radical, hateful agendas. Like climate scientists ...

JMPM: Hey, you said it. Not me!

thwap: Sarcasm. How you guys can pretend that, for instance, government scientists and government agencies can simply make shit up, year after year, and you don't investigate and expose them, let alone fire them, ... it literally makes my brain hurt to try to imagine the Bizarro World you've constructed to explain reality.

JMPM: Unlike you, conservatives don't see government as the answer to all of life's problems. We believe in just getting out of the way and letting people rise to their full potential.

thwap: You believe in getting out of the way of corporate criminals and letting their profits rise to their full potential, regardless of how many people are killed as a result of their short-sighted greed.

JMPM: Typical left-wing whining. I don't need to listen to anymore of this crap.

thwap: I'm sorry. I'll get back on topic. Why are isolated white, racist individuals not terrorists, but isolated individuals who declare Jihad are terrorists?

JMPM: I've already told you; teenaged neo-nazis aren't part of an existing worldwide culture ...

thwap: And it's already been established that they ARE part of an existing worldwide culture.

JMPM: People who have a distorted viewpoint of mainstream values have a distorted viewpoint because they're distorted individuals. Certain non-mainstream cultures are distorted to begin with, so they produce legions of terrorists.

thwap: Can you give an example of one of these distorted cultures?

JMPM: No. Because you'll jump all over me and call me "racist."

thwap: Come on! Be a pal!

JMPM: Nope. Ain't gonna do it.

thwap: Is imperialism a mainstream value? One that can have no ill effects and no bad consequences?

JMPM: Resentment over historical grievances is living in the past. And there were good and bad outcomes from so-called "imperialism."

thwap: So, US interest in the Middle East's oil isn't "imperialism"?

JMPM: Nutty conspiracy theory.

thwap: This is as productive as arguing with a stupid right-wing internet troll. Fuck off.

[Sorry for such a boring, fake interview. I started it intending to have "Peter MacKay" confess to all manner of racist beliefs. But as I wrote it, wanting it to appear natural, I introduced all the dodging and weaving that most right-wingers resort to to avoid taking responsibility and found it was taking far too long for a not too important goal. So, I brought it to a hasty conclusion. I'm posting it to justify the 45 minutes or so I wasted composing it.]

Interview With Peter MacKay

Good day (evening?) loyal "schoolyard" readers! In what some would call a "coup" I've managed to get Justice Minister Peter MacKay to sit down for an exclusive interview! Let's get right to it:

thwap: Thank's for agreeing to speak with me.

JMPM: How do I look?

thwap: This is just a blog. Words. Nobody can see you.

JMPM: Simple question, How. Do. I. Look?

thwap: Um, ... okay I guess. Normal. The usual.

JMPM: Good, right?

thwap: Personally, I wouldn't do that anti-abortion t-shirt with the suit and tie, but ...

JMPM: They're good people ...

thwap: Right. Anyway, I suppose the first thing that I'd like to ask you about is your controversial statement that the alleged plot of the neo-nazi teenagers to massacre people at a Halifax shopping mall wasn't "terrorism."

JMPM: (Sighs.) I don't see how it's controversial. They're just kids. Screwed-up kids sure. But they didn't kill anyone.

thwap: But Muslim teenagers -

JMPM: I'm going to cut you off right there; when some Muslim "teenagers" (as you put it) decide to join fundamentalist jihad, they're joining a larger movement that's already committing acts of terrorism all around the world.

thwap: But these teenagers in the Halifax plot were espousing Nazism. Certainly fascism, neo-Nazism ... that's a world movement with a history of violence?

JMPM: When was the last time Nazis flew a plane into a building?

thwap: Nothing comes to mind. But they're certainly violent. And just now they were plotting - allegedly plotting - actual terroristic violence.

JMPM: They weren't terrorists!

thwap: Mister MacKay, let me ask you something; If they had carried out a massacre, would they have been terrorists then?

JMPM: No. They would have been sick individuals.

thwap: They would have been "misfits" up until the moment they first killed someone?

JMPM: That's one way of putting it. Yes.

thwap: Would you care to elaborate?

JMPM: Um ...

thwap: Because I'm not sure how you reached your conclusion.

JMPM: Don't you remember being a teenager? Didn't you have violent fantasies that you kept to yourself?  

thwap: I'll admit to fantasizing about fights against my most obnoxious enemies that all went my way. Maybe some vague action-movie daydreams against imaginary opponents.

JMPM: Didn't you ever think of blowing-up your entire highschool, or putting all the stuck-up bitches who turned you down into one room and raping all of them?

thwap: No ...

JMPM: Or burying all the adults who pissed you off up to their heads in the ground and then dousing their heads with gasoline and lighting them all on fire?

thwap: No actually.

JMPM: I don't believe you.

thwap: Sorry.

JMPM: Political-correctness has erased your lefty memory.

thwap: Whatever. What about Timothy McVeigh, the American white supremacist who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma, ... was he a terrorist?

JMPM: That's what some are calling him. So I guess that's what he is.

thwap: But what do YOU think?

JMPM: Next question.

thwap: You can't say whether you think Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist or not?

JMPM: Ahem! The question you're entering into deals with certain subluminous issues of jurisdiction and epistemology that percludes a verifiable definitive analysis. Certain legal, diplomatic and allegatory niceties percludes my being able to stance my official definitionorial judgments ...

thwap: What about that right-wing, libertarian gun-nut in New Brunswick who killed those police officers?

JMPM: As you said, a single, libertarian-extremist gun-owner.

thwap: Those weren't my exact words. But even still, you don't see him as representative of a broader social phenomenon?

JMPM: I think there were some particular circumstances in this individual's history that led him to take his otherwise admirable values to dangerously extreme levels.

[To be continued.]

How Many Canadians Would Join stephen harper In The Closet?

Ralph Nader, via Montreal Simon (probably quoting somebody else), tells me that public support for harper's Bill C-51: The Canada Stasi Act stands at around 82 percent.

For fuck's sake!

Who are all these cowardly, ignorant, deluded ninnies? Once again, simple fact: The harpercons have killed, and will kill, more Canadians than the terrorists. Furthermore, "conservatism" in general, and the wider pathology of capitalism will kill even more.

That the vast majority of Canadians remain so ignorant of this FACT and so confused that they thereby support an unaccountable police force spying upon and harassing peaceful protesters, is the fault of the media and of the opposition parties.

Imagine a psycho at a house-party, who has already been punching and knifing people. Then he pulls out a sawed-off shot-gun. In this situation, most sane people would run and/or try to neutralize the danger. But in Canada, the deadly and corrupt harpercons are presenting us with this legislation and most of us appear to think it might be a good idea. As if we're the fellow party-goers who are hoping the psycho won't hurt anybody and maybe he's trying to protect us.

Disgusting.

"The True North, Strong and Free" indeed.

What blithering cowardice! What a nation of poseurs!

Disgusting!

The RCMP is Absolutely Insane

Check out this post by Alison at Creekside.

The whole thing is terrifying, but look at this particular gem:

The RCMP report then wanders bizarrely off into language treating anthropogenic climate change as some kind of hoax perpetrated by enviros. Greenpeace quotes from it :

"NGOs such as Greenpeace, Tides Canada and Sierra Club Canada, to name a few, assert climate change is now the most serious global threat, and that climate change is a direct consequence of elevated anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which, they believe, are directly linked to the continued use of fossil fuels…. 

Research and analysis done in support of ongoing RCMP criminal investigations shows that those involved in the anti-Canadian petroleum movement have an interest in drawing public attention to, and building recognition of, the perceived environmental threat from the continued use of fossil fuels. 

The publicizing of these concerns has led to significant, and often negative, media coverage surrounding the Canadian petroleum industry. The use of social media, including the use of live-streaming, provides the anti-petroleum movement the ability to by-pass the traditional news networks, to control and craft its message, and to promote a one-sided version of the actual events, leading to broadly based anti-petroleum opposition.” (emphasis added). 

So while you're watching Steve furiously waving his C-51Jihadi puppethand about, keep a closer eye on what his other C-51 oilhand is doing.

Why the fuck does the RCMP think it's any of it's goddamned business that environmentalists are expressing their own opinions about climate change, fracking, the oil industry, and any other beliefs or views?

Do they have an "investigation" into the Fraser Institute's "one-sided versions" of economic policy? Or any other corporate-capitalist fuckwad hater of democracy and justice?

This is absolutely insane. They should all be fired.

harper Blubbering and Whining About Radio-Canada

So, our unelected prime minister, stephen harper, was visiting Quebec in order to obtain some absolutely pathetic publicity photos of himself visiting the Winter Carnival. While he was there he gave an interview to a private radio station where he asserted that he believes the majority of Quebeckers support "conservative values"; " lowering taxes, staying tough on crime and cracking down on the threat of terrorism."

That's all harper has to offer you. he might lower your taxes. (he certainly lowers them for the rich. Then he runs deficits that requires slashing your services. Or, sometimes the provinces have to step in to bridge the difference. Especially when he increases their expenses. But, yeah, sometimes he lowers taxes.

Speaking of raising the provinces' costs expenses, there's what he calls "staying tough on crime." Most of the time this simply means a new piece of legislation to grandstand that the harpercons are making something illegal that is already illegal. But there's also their misguided, imbecilic move towards longer jail terms for everyone. The provinces bear most of the cost of increased sentences for increasing numbers of prisoners. They either go into debt, or raise your taxes.

So, once again, harper and his gang of idiots fuck it all up again.

All that's left is "cracking down on the threat of terrorism." Ahem. Bullshit policy for a bullshit threat. Suck on my hairy balls harper. I don't even feel like demolishing your stupid terrorism drivel.

I'll tell you what Quebec doesn't like: your Anglo-Canadian bigotry. your party's and your voters' constant screaming and yelling about how they hate that Canada is bilingual. your constant threats to equalization payments.

Face it harper, your sad attempts to woo voters in Quebec at the Winter Carnival are going to fail because you're a hollow shell full of shit. The people of Quebec have taken your measure and found you loathsome.

World Peace ... a crazy idea?

"Suck my dick officer!"

Here's an idea!  US elites should stop attacking other countries, and it should especially stop trying to dominate powerful rivals such as Russia and China. (For that to happen though, US elites will have to become former elites, and most of them be thrown into prison to serve as a deterrent for others. Their power must be broken by the democratization of the economy.)

Yes! Democracy!

Instead of an unsustainable world of consumer-capitalism, how about a sustainable world of humanist-environmentalism? An economy in which people matter and in which the realities of the planet take precedent?

While the capitalist economy masks its fragility behind a mask of arrogance and bluster, ... a genuine economy controlled by the people and functioning for the people in the context of the planet's life-sustaining potential.

I'm not going to pretend that Putin and the Chinese Communist Party are angels. Or that the terrorist threat du jour isn't nasty. But the terrorist threat is, for the most part, entirely the fault of US foreign policy (including its friendship with Saudi Arabia).  It's even inarguable that the terrorist threat is at least party a deliberate concoction of western elites, made to scare the impressionable and the stupid into surrendering their civil liberties. ("We have always been at war with ISIS.") And, in any case, the terrorist threat to most of us is miniscule. And, with regards to Russia and China, the fact of the matter is that the leadership of both those countries are sane enough to acknowledge that neither alone, or together, could they solve a war with the United States. (They could obviously do a lot of damage to the United States, but they have absolutely nothing to gain from starting a war with it. Because they would be destroyed. So they won't start a war. Simple as that.)

The United States currently spends more than the combined total of the next eight biggest military spenders. One would think that there's some sort of post-Cold War "peace dividend" still in there. Especially if wars of goddammed choice, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc., are avoided. Washington could cut the military budget in half and still manage to "keep Americans safe."

But keeping Americans safe is not why the US government spends all this money on its military. Besides corruption and waste and pork-barreling, this spending is necessary so that US corporations can DOMINATE the world. Just like our own stephen harper, neither the Democrats nor the Repugnicans give a shit about their own people. We can die in explosions, train-derailments, health insurance industry cruelty, police brutality, as cannon fodder in insane and idiotic wars. The point of US military spending is to make the world safe for Wall Street criminals and all the lower echelons of the US capitalist system.

If democracy ever took over the United States we could have peace and begin to invest in a better world.

Censoring Science

Right now I'm reading Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.

JOHN PASSACANTANDO: This government, at the behest of its oil company contributors, has been told not to put out information about global warming, not to allow the scientists to talk about their expertise with the press, about the connection between global warming and hurricanes. That happened at NOAA. There’s been pressure on Dr. James Hansen at NASA.
PAUL EHRLICH: I think it’s true that attitudes have changed slightly in the White House, because they now see a political issue, but they have worked very, very hard to suppress the science on global warming. For instance, they sent some junior jerk to try and keep Jim Hansen, who’s one of our very top climate scientists, from saying what he thought.
CHRIS MOONEY: Apparently, a NASA aide was instructed to interfere with Hansen’s ability to do press interviews. Actually, this completely backfired, because Hansen is not someone to be told to be quiet. And so, he just went to the media anyway, and it ended up exploding.
TIM FLANNERY: Can you imagine what it would be like for one of the world’s leading scientists, who is revered by everyone, to have this pipsqueak who lied about his credentials controlling what he tells the public? Just appalling. And, you know, the countries around the world would — I don’t know what they’d pay to have the advice of a Jim Hansen. It’s the sort of stuff we all desperately need. And here, in a country that actually pays him a salary and allows him to do his work, he is silenced. I mean, I honestly cannot see the sense of that. I can’t see who benefits.

AMY GOODMAN: That last speaker was acclaimed Australian scientist and writer Tim Flannery. Well, today, Dr. James Hansen himself joins us in our firehouse studio. His story of how the Bush administration tried to silence his warnings on climate change is detailed in a new book. It’s called Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. It’s written by author Mark Bowen. It's about how bush II regime political hacks in the service of private interests (the fossil fuels industry) set about trying to interfere with the reporting of factual, scientific findings, in order to obscure the reality and the origins of Global Warming.

It also shows where the filthy, stinking harpercons got their marching orders to censor Canadian scientists from. Because Canadian "conservatives" get all their ideas from their shameless, sell-out shill brethren from the USA. Their dog-whistle politics that they use as cover for corruption and exploitation are all tested in the hot-house of US crony-capitalist-politics.

Conservatism is a scam. It's politics for dupes, dweebs and fuck-ups. They're criminals of the most dangerous kind.

A Good Day For Canada

The schoolyard isn't a news site. It's a blog. So, I'm not always fast to get on top of the latest. The execrable "SUN News" has gone off the air and the day it happened was a good day for Canada. Some people from the journalism profession are mourning the loss of employment of their colleagues, but I can't bring myself to feel bad. If the company formerly known as "Blackwater" shut down, people would be out of work, but it would be a good thing for the world. Any hateful business or industry being shut down would be a good thing, even though it meant some people were unemployed. The answer to the crisis in journalism isn't fucking goddamned "SUN News."

It was a good day for Canada. Canada hasn't been looking too good lately. We've shown ourselves to be an apathetic, deluded people with no clue about our democratic heritage or the importance of our values. (Laughably though, that doesn't prevent us from complimenting ourselves on being a democratic, tolerant, compassionate society.) So, when a hateful, stupid, insulting travesty like "SUN News" failed, it at least showed the world that we're not that debased. There weren't enough angry, racist, stupid, boorish assholes to subsidize the angry, racist, stupid, boorish assholes of "SUN News." Furthermore, despite their corporate and political connections, those scumbags weren't able to manipulate the CRTC into forcing cable providers to carry them, which would have prolonged their existence. In this case, the system worked. It prevented this house of shit from poisoning our culture any more than the market would bear.

"SUN News" stole from us. They would have died sooner, but the anti-democratic criminal cabal of the harpercons lavished them with revenues to carry their bullshit, illegal propaganda "Action Plan" ads over and fucking over again. It's nauseating when you think of it. The network of the racist troll Ezra Levant is propped-up by the illegal propaganda spending of the anti-democratic, election-stealing harpercon regime. And we just sat there and took it.

Certainly one of the reasons that nobody watched "SUN News" was because it was difficult to find and many Canadians are too apathetic about their democracy to even care about a particular point of view. I suppose though, that I prefer the nothingness of an apathetic Canadian to the misshapen, ignorant nonsense that your typical "Blogging Tory" vomits onto the internet.

You know, when you think of the deletrious impact that "FOX News" has had on the US-American political culture, it becomes difficult to even grasp why some journalists feel so bad about the death of "SUN News" that they claim our "marketplace of ideas" is the poorer for its passing. It is not. It has been improved. Canada is a slightly better place now that it is gone.

On Jon Stewart Leaving the Daily Show

I like the Jon Stewart I see on the television. He seems like a very intelligent, witty man with a social conscience and a fair amount of courage. I've had a couple of problems with some of his work. And he did let the network walk back his having called Harry Truman a war criminal for dropping two atomic bombs and thereby killing 250,000 people (mostly civilians). But the occasionally inappropriate humour is unavoidable when you're doing a nightly comedy program about current events. And it's not as if Jon Stewart caving-in to pressure helped Harry Truman escape justice or prevented his quarter-of-a-million victims from coming back to life.

The "Daily Show" accomplished a lot. It was funny, informative and shit-loads more daring at questioning the powerful than mainstream television news. It showed penetrating insights on the vapidity and uselessness of the highest level of corporate infotainment propaganda.

But lately, I've been feeling that Jon Stewart is just going through the motions. (He's been working really hard to appear so, but that's just an indication of how talented he is.) Because, shouldn't all the devastating satire of "The Daily Show" have, you know, devastated something by now?

Perhaps it's always been this way. If "The Daily Show" had been mocking Nixon in the 1970s, things wouldn't have been any different. But the thing is, there wasn't a "Daily Show" in the 1970s. There is now, and people laugh, and it's cathartic, but then, well, ... nothing.

Ha-ha-ha! We're all being lied to, exploited, spied on, and there's no accountability for ruling class criminals! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

Nobody expects that ANYTHING is going to result from "The Daily Show" 's expozays of elite malfeasance anymore. Just like the system didn't crumble because some leftists camped out in parks in the Occupy movement. Just as Canada didn't stop being a racist, colonialist, criminal state in the face of Idle No More's rallies and flash-mobs. Just as no afternoon demonstrations, petitions, or small circulation progressive media is able to do much of anything.

Maybe I'm "seeing" only those things that fits my (generally negative) view of the world. But isn't it odd that Obama is cooking-up a war (of sorts) against nuclear-armed Russia, and nobody is even bothering to protest? Or harper has completely LIED his way into getting Canada involved in combat in Iraq and nobody is really moved to do even their usual token protesting?

Are we all at the stage Jon Stewart is at? That speaking truth to power, five days a week, year after year hasn't really changed anything so why bother going through the motions?

Who Will "Keep Us Safe" From the Conservative Party of Canada????

Seriously. 158 Canadian Forces were killed to impose a narco-pedophile kleptocracy on Afghanistan. (True, it was the Liberals who sent them there, and true, the people of Afghanistan were suffering under a nutbar-fundamentalist theocracy with their previous government.) And suicides of active CF and veterans is "an epidemic." Given that many of these suicides (and nervous breakdowns, and the negative health impacts of stress) are caused by targeted and deliberate mental and physical abuse on the part of the harpercon government, the Conservative Party of Canada is clearly a threat to the safety of Canadians.

Train derailments. When regulations are ignored or eliminated altogether at the behest of selfish, greedy fuckwads who argue that profit-maximization is their only legal obligation, ... what are we to expect? Without calculating the wider health impacts of toxic spills around the country, we will just take the number killed in the epic tragedy at Lac-Mégantic, of 47 and add it to the 158 Canadian soldiers killed.

605

Remember listeriosis? When 17 people died from eating tainted meat (the inevitable result of self-regulation in the meat-packing industry)? And Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz (and Health Minister Tony Clement) joked about it?

Some First Nations peoples might not see themselves as Canadian (and I wouldn't blame them) but technically, their health and safety is the responsibility of the federal government (which voluntarily assumed this duty in 1867). Are they safe from tainted drinking water? The environmental impacts of the Tar Sands? Deaths from exposure due to substandard housing? Of course not. They are directly threatened from the Conservatives' racist contempt for them.

On a larger scale, Canadians' safety is not just under threat from the federal Conservatives. As I've already said, a lot of this shit happened under the federal Liberals. And a lot of this shit happens under provincial governments too. Without any distortion whatsoever, one can say that Canadians are more threatened by unregulated capitalism than they are from terrorism.

But it's the height of delusion to imagine that harper's cynical police-state policies are intended to "keep Canadians safe." They are intended to keep Canadians down. They are intended to suppress dissent against the murderous greed of capitalism. The harpercons don't care about our safety. If we have to die so that their capitalist masters can make a few extra bucks, so be it.

Still Bitter

When I asked people, what were they going to specifically do, personally, to try to change things, ... and they didn't answer, ... and months, years later, nothing's changed, .... that's why.

Kapeesh?

Vast

"... Earth is one planet among ten or so (depending on how you count) revolving around an atypical star, our sun. On the distance scale of human experience, the solar system is immense. Earth is one hundred and fifty million kilometers from the sun. Pluto is some six billion kilometers away. The Oort cloud of comets, which marks the edge of the solar system, extends to thirty trillion kilometers from the sun. Although the space between the planets contains smaller asteroids, comets, and dust, the solar system consists mainly of empty space that seems to serve no purpose.

On this distance scale, the planets are tiny points. Yet they are huge on the human scale. The diameter of Earth is 12,742 kilometers. The largest planet, Jupiter, is 139,822 kilometers in diameter.

Beyond the solar system we find even more space. The next closest star (after the sun), Proxima Centauri, is forty trillion kilometers away. This is part of the triple-star system called Alpha Centauri. On this scale we should start using light-years as the unit of distance, where the light-year is the distance traveled by light in a year (9.45 trillion kilometers). The Alpha Centauri system is 4.22 light years away. Note that multiple-star systems, which are very common, do not provide the kind of orbital stability we experience on Earth that is very important to our survival. It would seem that only single-star systems are likely to support life, another indication that life is not high on the universe's agenda.

Our sun and its planetary system are well away from the center of a galaxy containing an estimated two hundred to four hundred billion other stars. Called the 'Milky Way,' after the band of stars we see across the sky on a clear night, our visible galaxy is a flat, spiral disk one hundred thousand light-years across, and about ten thousand light-years thick.

The Milky Way is but one of perhaps a hundred billion galaxies in the visible universe. We have two satellite galaxies, just outside the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The next galaxy nearest to us, Andromeda, is 2.44 million light-years away.

And, you might ask, how big is the universe? The farthest observed galaxy at this writing, Abell 1825 IR1916, is 13.2 billion light-years away. Since it has taken 13.2 billion light years for its light to reach us and the current estimate of the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, we are seeing this galaxy as it was only five hundred million years after the start of the big bang. Because the universe has been expanding since the light left Abell, this galaxy is now about forty billion light-years away.

The farthest distance we can ever hope to see, what is called our horizon, is 13.7 billion light-years from Earth. Beyond that, light would take longer than the age of the universe to reach us. As vast as is the universe within our horizon, cosmology suggests that a far vaster one lies beyond. If the inflationary big bang model of the early universe is correct, then in a tiny time interval (something like 10 to the -35th second), the universe expanded in size by a factor that is almost impossible to imagine. Here is one estimate of that factor. Write down the number 1 and follow it by a hundred zeros. Then raise the number 10 to that power (10 to 10 to the 100th power). I have not been able to think of any analogy from common experience or science to help visualize that number. The size of the visible universe (10 to the 26th power meters) is only 10 to the 61st power times larger than the smallest distance that can be defined, the Planck distance (10 to the -35th meter)."

... From Victor J. Stenger's God, the failed hypothesis, pages 155-57

Progressive Strategy For 2015 Federal Election

Slumberjack won't be voting. He'll (ineffectively) try to convince as many other people as he can to stay home as well. He might influence poor people (if he knows any) who were thinking of staying home anyway. The larger anarchist project is, ... well, don't try to impose any sort of oppressive narrative on him. Slumberjack subscribes to the "Human Strike" wherein any petulant refusal to do anything (or nothing [????]) becomes elevated as "revolutionary." And on and on you go until you die.

I suppose we'll all die. And many of our big projects will fail to come to fruition. So perhaps Slumberjack is right with this idiotic "Human Strike" concept. Just tell yourself that your everyday bitching and whining and passive aggression is a revolutionary project and VOILA! you're transformed from pathetic failure to anarchist super-radical!

...

I'd rather not talk about this stupidity any longer.

Sibyn will vote. Even though he/she lives in Vancouver and the election results from Ontario and Quebec will have already been counted and the election decided, rendering his/her vote null and void. And what with party discipline in the House of Commons, and the likelihood of a Librocon or Connibberal government, who cares anyway? Canadian democracy is a joke according to Sibyn. Unless it isn't. And Sibyn is just a powerless nothing in the face of the corporate tyranny. But Sibyn votes out of "civic duty." Because Sibyn is vast and contains multitudes. Either that or Sibyn is just an incoherent whiner.

I accept that as an ordinary person I have little to zero capability of bringing about revolutionary change, and don't feel the need to point fingers and throw all the blame onto the "other" for the state of affairs in the world. I don't blame ordinary people and I don't blame myself. 

Right. That translates as: "I can do nothing. Together, we can do nothing. But what are you going to do? How dare you try to insist otherwise? Now let me go back to complaining about how bad everything is."
 
Stupid shit-head. 

Some progressives continue to push for a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP. Two-thirds of those people are Liberals, for whom "strategic voting" has always meant vote for a Liberal candidate, even if the Liberal candidate is the least viable one. Because they're shameless partisan hacks.

We're more likely to see a coalition of the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, with the Greenies hanging around the edges clinging to the Liberals. What with all the smoochin' and a huggin' going on in the House of Commons these days.

Thuggish cretin Jim Flaherty retires? Send the obnoxious troll off with accolades. Then he dies? Actually cry for the toad. Then he gets a goddamned state funeral.

A schizophrenic with a seven-shot hunting rifle storms Parliament Hill? Give goddamned stephen harper a goddamned HUG afterwards!!! (OMFG!)

Could it possibly get any more sickening????

Then the buffoonish, boorish, bullying, incompetent, international disgrace John Baird retires. (So he can get his goddamned pension at 55 instead of 65.) And he gets a goddamned standing ovation by everyone in Parliament?

These assholes have demonstrated contempt for Parliament. Do you know what Parliament is Liberal and NDP MP's? It's the place where you work! It's the place you're privileged to represent us. It's where our laws as a people are proposed and debated. It's where you, as our representatives are supposed to keep an eye on the actions of the executive branch. Yes. That place. The place that harper rules with a stolen majority, obtained via widespread election fraud. It's the place where he's used that stolen majority to ram through one omnibus bill after another. It's the place where he refused to give basic financial information on his policies to you when he was in the minority. It's the place where he basically insults you as friends of the "Jihadists" who want Canadian soldiers to die.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

Seriously! How did you get so fucked-up?

I can't continue today ....

Change the Narrative on Terrorism

Montreal Simon is saying that it's smart politics for Justin Trudeau (whose Liberals are doing most of the water-carrying here) and Thomas Mulcair (who have at least mentioned grave concerns about a lack of oversight) to acquiesce to the harpercons' new "anti-terror" bill and then change it later. This way, they don't fall into harper's trap. Because if they voted against it (it would still pass because of harper's fraudulently arrived at majority) harper would be able to paint them as being "soft on terror."

That may or may not be true. I'm not going to dispute Simon's assertion on what the most effective tactics would be. My point here is how depressing it is how ludicrous the common wisdom is and how refreshing it would be if there was someone in Parliament who would come down on this garbage like a ton of bricks.

Let's first establish that "terrorism" is entirely a product of western imperialism. Israeli imperialism creates terrorism as the only response of people being robbed and abused on a daily basis. Hamas was encouraged in its early days by Mossad. Hezbollah was formed to expel the Israelis from their illegal occupation of Lebanon.

US foreign policy has not only bred terrorism, it has created or at least encouraged it! The Mujaheddin war against the Soviets and their clients in Afghanistan brought us Al Qaeda eventually. US allies in Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab princely states fund and arm the extremist rebels in Syria and Libya. The atrocities of the USA and its NATO allies, added on to the decades-long abuses against the Palestinians, provide the means by which young Muslim men become "self-radicalized" (to use the most recent term popular with the mouth-breathing cretins who style themselves as experts on these subjects).

Constant harping about "Islamicism" by harper, CSIS and the RCMP, and various self-interested parties in the mainstream media also put these ideas into people's heads.

The best antidote to the problem of terrorism in Canada is the removal of stephen harper from power!

And, anyway, the best way to keep Canadians safe in general is to remove harper from power! Then we won't have quite so many deadly train derailments, killed and maimed soldiers, listeriosis poisonings, Tar Sands cancer deaths, and on and on it goes. As a matter of fact, if Canadians are worried about their safety, it's best to just deep-six the whole political "philosophy" of "conservatism" altogether!

If somebody could stand up in the House of Commons and throw back something like that at those beshitted imbeciles, that would be something to cheer for! And then, if that same person was confident enough and smart enough to ignore the mewling cries for "civility" and the harebrained complaints of those Canadians who run to the fainting couch whenever someone calls our bullshit political culture for what it is, I think a lot more people would rally to that person than the received wisdom would have it.