How Brainwashed are You?

 

I didn't really know what to call this post. I've got a bunch of things bothering me recently. Here goes:

So, the Roman Catholic Church in Canada grudgingly, sorta admits to having abused the First Nations children stolen from their families and placed under Catholic Residential Schools by the Canadian state. They abused them. They starved them. They beat them. They used them as unpaid labour. They forbid them from speaking their own languages. They raped them. They made them live in squalor which encouraged diseases like tuberculosis. This led to the deaths of thousands of children and permanent trauma for thousands more.

As I said, the Catholic Church essentially admitted to this sickening barbarism, and "promised" to "try" to pay $27 million in compensation. Then, revoltingly, the Catholic Church pretends it could only come up with $3 million. 

Here's the thing: Catholics in Canada supposedly number 12.8 million. Two dollars from each of them would have almost raised that $27 million. The Catholic Church in Canada wants to pretend that it couldn't raise $27 million?!?!?!?!!? And what are we hearing from Catholic laypeople? The "flocks" who attend weekly at their churches to receive moral instruction and uplift from this institution with that wee little problem of child rape and cover-up that it has to overcome? Aren't they ashamed of their religious institution's outrageously cynical and sleazy and cruel and selfish and greedy and disgusting behaviour? 

Is there a movement of outraged Catholics demanding that the Church pay what it said it would?!?!? If not, why not????

This is the level of apathy and self-centredness that blights so many of us and will be the doom of our species.

Next up: Canada being one of the countries at the World Trade Organization blocking the lifting of patent restrictions on the production of COVID-19 vaccines:

Despite having the support of more than 140 nations, the head of the World Health Organization, and hundreds of civil society organizations spanning the globe, the proposed waiver has been mired in fruitless negotiations for months as wealthy WTO members—most prominently Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada—refuse to drop their opposition in the face of growing grassroots pressure.

The People's Vaccine Alliance, an international coalition of public health organizations campaigning for equitable vaccine distribution, warned following the WTO's meeting Tuesday that "countries' inaction isn't just frustrating bureaucracy."

"It's a death sentence for so many people," the coalition tweeted. "Support the TRIPS waiver. End the pandemic."

I don't suppose any "progressive" blogging, partisan Liberal Party hack, laughable Justin Trudeau groupies will ever have anything to say on this monstrous behaviour, in between their interminable posts about how awesome and studly and saintly and beautiful and perfect Justin Trudeau is and how maybe he should call a snap election before COVID-19 is defeated because polls show that the Liberals would win a majority and THAT is all that really matters after all?

When it comes to COVID-19, ... this is just a mini-version of the deadly stupidity that has also been at work on the Global Warming file, as Ian Welsh hammers home:

I am tired of living in societies where we know how to do the right thing and simply refuse to do so because our elites are psychopathic, selfish and greedy and our population refuses to discipline or control the elites.

We KNOW what to do to stop Covid. We KNOW how to do it. We just fucking refuse.

This is goddamn pathetic. It’s just like climate change, but on a faster timeline so you can see it in weeks to months rather than decades. We may go extinct, we are certainly going to kill and impoverish billions and probably wipe out half the world’s species (which will hurt us terribly, not just them) all because while we KNOW how to do the good, non psychopathic, non criminally insane things, we REFUSE.

You discipline your elites, or most of  you and your children will die or be impoverished by their actions and lack of actions.

With COVID-19, the people on my team, .... which is to say, ... anyone who opposes austerity imposed on the majority and taxpayer bail-outs for banksters, ... anyone who opposes unilateral abrogation of our Treaties with the First Nations and who deplores the racism of Canadian society, ... anyone who knew there were no WMD's, ... everyone who opposes murderous racism from the police, ... etc., etc., ... you all know who you are: It's so damned frustrating to know that if we ever did organize something to at least force the stupid Canadian government of stupid Justin Trudeau to join the majority of the world in allowing the free manufacture of vaccines, ... that we'd also have to fight a rearguard action against the shit-heads who say that COVID-19 is a hoax and the vaccines contain microchips and all that other stupid nonsense. The same idiots who deny global warming even when towns in British Columbia are bursting into flames from unprecedented heatwaves. Fuck those idiots.

Finally (for today) MILLIONS of people continue to starve to death in Yemen as a direct policy on the part of the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and with the direct support of the USA. (For its part, Justin Trudeau's Canada continues the policy of stupid stephen harper in accepting the blood money of the Saudi regime for purchases of made-in-Canada military vehicles.) This atrocity, this abomination, has been going on for YEARS now. And what is the peace movement doing about it?

What am I doing about it? Nothing. And I'll tell you why: I believed that stephen harper and Doug Ford needed to be forced to resign but that getting them to do so would require more than a few afternoon protests where some empty speeches were made and placards (some with clever slogans, some not so clever) are carried. I believed that taking on an entrenched neo-liberal regime required lots of work. Lots of preparation. Lots of planning. Lots of outreach to ordinary Canadians. But Canadian progressives prefer to stick with what they know. Which is milling about in public with a few like-minded individuals (a few? a few dozen? a few hundred? a few thousand? whatever.) making empty "demands" and then going home. Proposals that we try something else because Plan A isn't working are to be met with embarrassed silence until the complainer goes away.

What does it say about the state of the international peace movement that a massive crime such as the mass murder in Yemen is met with practical silence? Fine. I'm a delusional idiot. What are the sane, intelligent, smarter, superior tacticians of the Left doing?

It could be argued (and I have argued it) that we might be overwhelmed by the number of fires (both literal and figurative) that we have to put out: Global warming, Yemen, racist police violence, austerity, increasing economic inequality, Venezuela sanctions, Israeli apartheid, Canadian apartheid and racism against the First Nations, cuts to public healthcare and other services, etc., etc., etc., .... But that just goes to show why we need to think seriously about TAKING POWER rather than making infinite "demands" on the amoral psychopaths who rule us.

But so many progressives shove their heads up their asses and fanatically support neo-liberal con-artists like the Democratic Party USA or the Liberal Party of Canada (whooz kidding whom? the NDP sux!) and spending three years obsessing over crimes that Donald Trump didn't commit while ignoring the crimes he did.

I'm blogging because I need to vent. I've left proposing solutions to the world's problems to the more obviously intelligent, wise and capable people. And you just have to open your eyes to see their uselessness.  I'm going back to bed. We're all going to die.