Maybe You'll Like This

 My friend Kevin Mackay is now making videos at "Rise Like Lions." I'm listening to this now. Just started. Thought I'd get the word out:

So there you go ...

Another Look At Egerton Ryerson

 

People I tend to respect have condemned Egerton Ryerson as the chief instigator of the culturally genocidal and abusive and murderous residential schools. I took their word for it as I know very little about the man. I didn't know he had anything to do with the residential schools. This CounterPunch article by University of Athabasca's Dr. Michael Welton presents Ryerson in a far different light. 

What many Canadians do not understand is that an Ojibwe leader such as Peter Jones was determined to “see manual labour schools established in Canada West, schools run by Indigenous people themselves as administrators and teachers.” Clearly, Jones (and Ryerson) knew that to compete, “the Indians needed to know basic reading, writing, and arithmetic to have a fund of general knowledge about the larger society. Once they had become self-reliant, they could protect their tiny reserves from outsiders’ intrusions, defend the unsurrendered lands to the north and the west, and also participate in the settler’s world around them” (Smith, 1987, p. 193). In other words, Jones and other Anishinaabeg leaders “supported the idea of a residential school, not as a means of working to erase their separate identity, but rather as a defence tactic to strengthen it.”

In a word, they needed formal schools to enable them to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and sensibilities to defend their cultures and engage the white settler society as equals. It would be up to Indigenous leaders to decide if a residential form of schooling would be appropriate for their youth. Ryerson’s advocacy of training males to be “industrial farmers” makes sense in pre-industrial Canada where farming was the driver of the economy. He thought the churches would run the residential schools; the government would play a supervisory role. Ryerson, Smith states, “worked for the economic self-sufficiency of the Anishinaabeg.”

I thought it was worthy of mentioning.

Venting About Stupid People

 

I'm typing with STONER ROCK blaring from my headphones to drown out the incessant yapping and screeching of my stupid neighbours' tiny lapdog/toy something or other. (These fucking morons leave this miniature monstrosity out in their backyard for half-an-hour at a time and it yaps and screeches insanely at the world almost the entire time. Furthermore, these dipshits have had the fucking thing outside before 7 am and after midnight on several occasions. [How anyone who can hold down a job can be so fucking stupid as to need it explained to them that such behaviour is unacceptable is beyond my ability to comprehend.])

Question for Proponents of "Plandemic" Conspiracy Theories ... Who Decides to Cancel Surgeries?

Just a quick question for yeez all: So, according to you there is no healthcare crisis. Because COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu. It might even BE the seasonal flu. Everyone else dying during the non-flu season has been dying FROM co-morbidities (high blood pressure, obesity, cancer, whatevah) that they had (perhaps) WITH COVID-19.

According to you guys, there are a few brave hospital workers posting the TRUTH about hospitals with only business-as-usual numbers of patients on their social media pages, but everyone else (including, of course, the corporate media) refuses to inform the public about this. And then there are those doctors, nurses and orderlies who know to keep quiet about the Globalist Agenda -- OR ELSE! -- and gosh darn it, it's all so frustrating! Trying to get your story out to the sheeple in the face of this obstruction and cowardice.

What's more dastardly, ... is the decision of hospitals to cancel surgeries, ... allegedly in the face of the numbers of COVID-19 patients swamping the hospitals. 

So my question to you who question whether the pandemic is even real; my question to you people who appear to have "The Rebel" website, the right-wing, Islamophobic, global-warming denying/fossil fuels supporting, People's Party of Canada supporting, "questioning" of the mass graves of the residential schools website as one of your biggest sources of information and moral support, .... You people who have among you a large number of fans of the repulsive Donald Trump, ... my question is; Who is responsible for the decision to cancel surgeries, allegedly (according to you) in a situation where there is no crisis?

What's the benefit to, say, the head of the Alberta Health Service, to cancel these surgeries when there is NO crisis and therefore, cancelling these surgeries is cruel and inhuman? What rewards to you imagine they obtain from "The Globalists" to make this call?

And what's in it for the doctors who should know that there's no healthcare crisis, and that therefore these surgeries are supposedly being cancelled for political-conspiracy reasons, thereby needlessly endangering their patients' health and well-being? What is keeping these doctors from shouting to anyone who will listen about this scandal?

I ask you this in the hopes that perhaps seeing the absurdity of what you believe and what you're trying to get everyone else to believe will become obvious to you. But perhaps you have an answer that isn't hilarious in a bizarre sort of way?

Start From the Premise that the Virus is REAL

 

Two people I tend to admire, Jimmy Dore (who steadfastly refuses to swallow the line that the Democratic Party USA is the only hope for progressives, or any hope at all for anyone not an oligarch) and Caitlin Johnstone, have been expressing sympathy for people who don't want to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Dore's obsession with this has caused me to unsubscribe from his YouTube channel. 

There are legitimate issues and principles behind their stances. I recognize this. I actually totally agree with Dore and Johnstone's opposition to establishment proposals to censor social media (or any media) in the form of deleting discussion of anti-vaccine, pro-vaccine alternatives, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, etc.,. These social media giants, the oligarchy in general and their politician hirelings are pro-censorship against opposition voices in general. Getting progressives and left-wingers to actually agree to allowing FaceBook to delete people's posts due to their being "disinformation" is a dream come true for the oligarchy. 

Dore is rightfully critical of Anthony Fauci (the Chief Medical Advisor to the President) for his calculated dishonesty early in the pandemic regarding the general public wearing masks. Fauci had said that people should NOT wear masks. They wouldn't help. But later he said that masks DO help. His earlier statements had been an attempt to prevent the public from trying to access N95 masks (and other suitable masks) that were in short supply for healthcare workers. Whatever short-term benefits Fauci hoped for were undeniably overwhelmed by the blow to his credibility. (Dore's YouTube comments section is infested with Trump-worshipping shitheads who get such a masturbatory rush from his evisceration of the Democratic Party that they follow him despite his support for immigrants' rights and for a greater welfare state. They wholeheartedly agree with Dore on Fauci saying that he's a liar who should never be believed again. What these shit-for-brains fuckwads don't admit is that their own bloated, orange spray-tanned, daughter-luster-after, yellow-haired combover, serial conman, Donald J. Trump is also an admitted liar. Trump told Bob Woodward that he knew COVID-19 was deadly serious, but was publicly downplaying because he didn't want to create a panic. Being right-wing imbeciles it is second-nature for these turds to hypocritically ignore Trump's admitted lying while pompously declaring Fauci as permanently shredded of credibility.)

Dore did a video on the subject of the medicine "ivermectin" that points out that besides being a horse de-wormer, it is also made in versions for human use. It's no secret that ivermectin is used to treat scabies, worm infections and acne. Continuing to insist that it is solely "horse de-wormer" is brazen, calculated dishonesty.  It's been a while since I watched that video, but I believe Dore says that ivermectin is officially being used in Japan. That appears to be untrue. They are conducting a largescale clinical study of it though. 

When I first heard about ivermectin (actually from Dore's comments section where it was celebrated as the latest right-wing, anti-vaxxer wonder drug) I decided to look it up. It was being promoted by some group called "Frontline Healthcare Experts" (or something) and that they'd had an article about its use for treating COVID-19 in a medical journal called CHEST (which I also looked up and it seemed legit). (The "Frontline Healthcare" ... or whatever ... people have been characterized as quacks and kooks by establishment media and healthcare experts, but these are the same people who insist that ivermectin is only ever used for horses. So make up your own mind.)

I'm going to provide one link in this quickly written post. It's a link to studies on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 from the National Center for Biotechnology (which is part of a branch of the USA's National Institute of Health). From the Abstract of the study I was sorta looking for:

A 5-day course of ivermectin was found to be safe and effective in treating adult patients with mild COVID-19. Larger trials will be needed to confirm these preliminary findings.

This is part of what I said recently about how we shouldn't give right-wing douchebags ammunition. Obviously there are imbeciles out there obtaining veterninary-use ivermectin and self-medicating and getting sick. Just like some absolute idiots drank bleach when Trump blathered on about how that could clean out one's internal plumbing, with the result that those absolute idiots died.  But when these anti-vaxxers read these easily refuted criticisms of ivermectin in general it only adds fuel to their fire of stupidity and hypocrisy. 

But Dore is interviewing guests who are (or at least have some shred of legitimacy to claim they are) experts on vaccines or COVID-19 or SARS in general and he is giving them a respectful hearing when he simply isn't qualified to know if they're charlatans or not. And he doesn't get on alternative voices to help him to decide. And this is dangerous. I mean, he can do whatever he wants. (See my agreement with his anti-censorship views above.) But as a communicator, a public broadcaster, and as someone who has no real grasp of the medical science, to be giving a platform to medical rebels who could (for all he knows) be conmen or quacks spewing disinformation about a public health crisis, is highly irresponsible. 

I guess what I'm trying to lead up to is this: In a recent post (okay, one more link) from Caitlin Johnstone, condemning the hatred against vaccine-refusers, someone in the comments section writes this:

I’m afraid Keith Olbermann is right! I am personally afraid to put into my system the content of a syringe abusively called “vaccine” only authorized in case of an emergency artificially created by the overreaching western governmental denial of treatments proved remarkably effective in India, inter alia, and certainly better than nothing – which failed the honesty test bench from the get go. This experimental mRNA shit has already killed tens of thousands and harmed hundreds of thousands according to the CDC/FDA’s VAERS itself, which is why a sizeable number of nurses – who should know – won’t take the jab to protect themselves against a disease that’s nothing more than a strain of flu (like most coronavirus diseases) and that, in spite of PCR tests run at 40 CT grossly over-estimating its impact through overwhelming production of false positives, has still been officially survived in the first year, without a vaccine, by 99,97% of the world population (!)

Okay. First. Caitlin Johnstone argues the valid principle that giving governments the power to inject you with chemicals against your will is somewhat a denial of your bodily autonomy. Fine. But when it comes to vaccines, we have to consider the possibility that the things they're vaccinating us against (polio, measles for instance) are real. With regards to polio and measles we can also look to the historical results of immunization campaigns and see that they worked and that they were not actually a plot by Big Pharma to inject micro-chips into the population. The shithead commenter quoted above exposes themself as a shithead with their drivel about PCR "false positives" and "nothing more than a strain of the flu" garbage.

The virus is real. That should be our starting point. I know the virus is real. In my own life, my own experience, I know this is not a hoax.

In the factory where I recently worked for five years (I've since gotten another shit-paying job just to have a change of scenery) the past two years have been different from the previous three. As I said in another COVID-related post: In my experience, as long as they've been advertising annual flu vaccines in Ontario I have never gotten the vaccine, I have never gotten the flu, and I have never heard of anyone in my family, friends or co-worker circles of having gotten the flu either. But during this pandemic, three guys in my last department got it. Two of them (one in his mid-twenties, the other in his late-forties) said it was very bad. Another guy in the the department I'd worked in before that was hospitalised from COVID and was off work for months. A young man in another section who I joked around with caught it from his wife, and while she had only mild symptoms, he described it as "a motherfucker" that he never wants again. Another guy was hospitalized with it, came back to work after time-off but would routinely have to clock-out early, being too dragged-out to continue. One arrogant boor came in WITH the virus, knowing he was sick, and looking like death warmed-over. He was fired for his stupidity. Oh yeah, another guy in my old department had to go home to Mexico to help his parents deal with the death of his brother from COVID. And EVERYONE in the factory knew about a woman on the assemblyline whose elderly father (whom she lived with) died from COVID.

So, COVID-19 is real. All your local boards of health are telling the truth about hospitals being overwhelmed. That stupid woman who showed up at protests wearing an eye-mask (so clever!) and ranting about conspiracies until she herself was hospitalized and subsequently killed by the virus (with hordes of her shit-head allies calling the hospital and demanding they treat her with ivermectin) found out it was real. All the right-wing radio hosts who denied the virus and rejected the vaccines and then got infected with COVID-19, admitted they were wrong from their hospital beds, and died from it, were not creatures of Bilderberg, whose whole lives had been performative frauds designed for this one psy-op. 

Yes. It is an invasion of your bodily autonomy to have to get mandatory vaccines. But the COVID-19 virus IS REAL. It is highly contagious and highly deadly. And just as the cost of some small loss in bodily autonomy, and the pain of having to admit that sometimes modern medicine knows what it's doing, are very real, ... it has been agreed that the benefits of reducing deaths and disabilities caused by measles and polio from mandatory vaccines were worth the cause. We live in a society. The social benefit of your freedom to be a plague rat is less than the social benefit of masses of people not getting sick from your stupidity. The FACT that a lot of the anti-vaxx/COVID-deniers are right-wing shitheads, who are stupid hypocrites and deluded assholes is something else to remember.

To his credit, Jimmy Dore has been vaccinated and admits it. (Unlike Tucker Carlson who has been vaccinated but won't admit it while simultaneously telling his millions of viewers how dangerous the vaccines are.) There are genuine values and principles behind some of what he is saying. The way that the vile US political-economy won't give low-wage workers a day-off to get vaccinated and deal with the side-effects is another one of his valid criticisms.

But the virus is real. It's very dangerous. It could kill millions if these COVID-denying morons are treated with anything more than the tiny morsel of respect that they deserve.

Something Weird

 

When Justin Trudeau called the last election it was clear that he wanted to try to obtain a majority in Parliament. And Liberal hacks were all singing in unison about how this was necessary because the opposition parties were blocking him at every turn. Why, no bills had been passed in the previous five months before the election! Partisan gridlock!

Strangely, when the election turned out to deliver another Liberal minority, Liberal hacks were all united under the message that this was a victory. "A strong minority" as one shameless shithead put it. I find that kinda weird because those Liberals should have been (if they had any intellectual consistency) been dismayed at finding themselves in the same situation that had created the lose-lose situation of the precious Liberal Party of Canada, led by the dreamy, perfect Justin Trudeau, being stymied in all its efforts to save our glorious Canada from the toxic Trudeau-haters and Canada-haters. 

Apparently Bill Kristol Got His Ass Kicked

 

I've been too busy to watch it all but according to Caitlin Johnstone it's entirely one-sided. Scott Horton has the facts and the logic and Bill Kristol is reduced to whining about how he's being portrayed as a bad guy.  I like Johnstone's speculation as to why Kristol got himself into this predicament:

The only unanswered question when all was said and done was, how the hell did Kristol get it in his head that entering this debate was a good idea?

One can only assume hubris. Hubris arising from a life in an elitist echo chamber where his warped views are seldom challenged, and continual marination in the kind of unearned validation that only Beltway swamp monsters ever receive.

So far it's only had 11,000 views. But now that the Thwapster is behind it I'm sure that number will rocket into the stratosphere!

Justin Trudeau: Evil or Stupid?

 Obviously the question doesn't preclude the possibility that he could be a little bit of both. But I've been on-and-off musing about Justin Trudeau's decision to vacation in Tofino rather than honour the first National Day For Truth & Reconciliation. Was Trudeau a dim bulb who wanted to relax with his family and really didn't think it would be that big a deal? Or did he take a pass on the Day of Truth & Reconciliation because he wanted to send the First Nations a signal that he holds them in contempt?

Isn't it sobering to realize that this question has to be asked?

COVID & the Differences Betwixt Conservatives & Liberals

 

If you vote for a federal Conservative politician you get tax cuts for the wealthy, slavish devotion to the oil industry, racist abuse of the First Nations, and support for imperialist wars. If you vote for a federal Liberal politician you get tax cuts for the wealthy, slavish devotion to the oil industry, slightly less racist abuse of the First Nations, and support for imperialist wars.

The main thrusts of the two capitalist parties are basically the same because they're capitalist parties. Capital puts profit before people. It puts profit before the health of the environment. It puts short-term benefit for the wealthy, powerful few ahead of long-term sustainability and sanity. Capitalism will happily use war and other forms of violence to impose its will. To the extent that parties embrace capitalism and are dominated by capitalism, to that extent will they pursue similar ends.

"Politicizing" Trudeau in Tofino

 

Some people (including members of the First Nations) are frustrated at how the news about Canada's first ever Day of National Truth and Reconciliation became dominated instead by the story of Justin Trudeau's decision to spend the day vacationing with his family instead of performing any public act of rememberance and atonement for Canada's numerous crimes and our abysmal record of physical and cultural genocide.

And that is perfectly valid. I can see where they're coming from.

On the other hand, I ask the mewling Liberal apologists who are shamelessly appropriating that argument: Could you not just SHUT THE FUCK UP and take your lumps on this? If you're so appalled at how the national conversation has been diverted to the subject of Trudeau's bone-headed decision, why not make the choice to ignore the criticisms (or, alternatively, make a quick apology for Trudeau's bone-headed decision) and return the discussion to where it should be? Write a blog post or tweet about Canada's past and present crimes and about how you personally will atone and how you will try to help make "Canada" as a whole atone. On that same "other hand" there are many First Nations activists (like Cindy Blackstock)  who are publicly condemning Trudeau's decision.

For my part, while I acknowledge the frustrations mentioned above, I also think it's important for us to realize that Trudeau's behaviour does deserve and, indeed, require condemnation. Getting out of the way the fact that many of the people criticizing Trudeau on this are hypocrites who demonstrably don't give a shit about the sufferings of the First Nations, with some of them even endorsing the policies that cause(d) that suffering, it's important to look at how Trudeau's behaviour is par for the course on the way that Canada treats the idea of truth and reconciliation with the First Nations.

Justin Trudeau is not a private citizen. He's the Prime Minister of Canada. He just stood for re-election to continue to be prime minister so it's not as if he's sick of the job and really wants to be somewhere else. So he's prime minister and his government has legislated a federal holiday: The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This federal holiday had already been planned before the confirmation (not "discovery" because the First Nations knew they existed) of a mass grave of First Nations' children on the site of a former residential school. The revelation of this mass grave would (one would think) have made honouring the very first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation at least TEN TIMES as important as before. 

So what does airhead Justin Trudeau decide to do? 

Use the day to vacation with his family.

...

In other words: "Yeah. Sorry about the whole mass graves and genocide and continued abuse and theft and all that other shit. Sucks to be you. Catch you on the flip-side babies!!!"

Is this not indicative of the hollowness of all official promises from Canadian governments, individual politicians, and institutions (like the Catholic Church)? Wouldn't someone who really cared about Truth & Reconciliation do more than provide lip service to it?

And the rush with which partisan hack Liberals are claiming to be offended on behalf on whoever First Nations people are more angry with the diversion of the reportage is sickening. Case in point is the execrable Montreal Simon. Simon tries to excuse how Trudeau attended a ceremony for the day the evening before heading off for a vacation. I'm sorry Simon, this was Canada's VERY FIRST National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. Trudeau is supposed to lead. He's supposed to set an example. Running off to a vacation with his family is the WRONG example. (Which, stupid as he is, Trudeau knew. Hence his itinerary's saying that he was in Ottawa working, with his vacationing in Tofino being mentioned late in the day.)

Then, Simon attempts to tug at our heart-strings by mentioning how:

this is the time of the year when the Trudeau family gathers to remember  Pierre Trudeau, and Michel Trudeau who was killed in an avalanche in 1998.

Did the Trudeau family really all gather together in Tofino? Like, extended family, like his mother and his brother? Or was it just him and the wife and kids? Because if it was the latter, well it goes without saying that they could have easily "gathered" in Ottawa. And, even if it was the former, ... well, ... so what?

Pierre Trudeau died on September 28th, 2000. I get that September 30th is only two days away from the anniversary of his father's death. But that was twenty-one years ago. I'm willing to bet that Justin isn't incapacitated by grief (for days on end) every September 28th. And, as I said above, Justin Trudeau is not a private citizen. He chose to be a public figure and therefore he has to face up to his responsibilities. (Michel Trudeau died in mid-November. It's disgusting for Simon to attempt to wedge that into this discussion.) 

What's even more disgusting is how tone-deaf Simon is with this argument about Trudeau wanting to be with his family to remember their dead. Do you know who else wanted to be with their families you fucking SHIT-HEAD???? The First Nations' children whose bodies are in those MASS GRAVES!!!!! Do you know who else wants to remember their dead? The FIRST NATIONS!!!!

Jesus Christ! The more you think about it, the more insane Montreal Simon's garbage becomes! (He spends much of the rest of the post babbling like an idiot about how Trudeau's failed attempt at a majority government was a resounding victory. Just like how if someone lost in the woods wanders around all day and finds themselves back where they started could be said to have made progress!)

Simon wrote a post about his "own journey" to truth and reconciliation. I thought about reading it, but, and I'm being quite honest here, ... I'm worried that it would make me throw-up on my laptop forcing me to have to buy a new one. But when I read that title, my mind went back to a memory of Montreal Shithead stupidly asking "Will the Native Protests Kill the Reconciliation Process?" Not the fucking pipelines being shoved through First Nations' territories against their protest; Not the fucking RCMP arresting them at peaceful roadblocks on their own land with RCMP snipers pointing rifles at their heads; but the "Native Protests" are the threat to reconciliation!!! Supposedly (according to Simon) none of this was Trudeau's fault because of provincial jurisdiction and the autonomy of the RCMP.  As if a trans-national pipeline (and all the subsidies and approvals it got) has nothing to do with federal authority! As if the federal government has not jurisdiction in Aboriginal affairs! As if Trudeau was genuinely helpless to do anything about the RCMP's actions! Poor lambikins Justin Trudeau! Being unfairly "bullied" by those First Nations' goons and their "monstrous" non-Native allies!

You know, when Simon first started acting like a groupie/apologist for Justin Trudeau, I began to criticize him for it, but I always said that his heart was in the right place and maybe he was just too traumatized by the stephen harper years to process that the Liberal Party of Canada are definitely not the friends of ordinary Canadians. But as the years go by, I fear that Simon continues to lose whatever grasp of morals and principles that he ever had as he descends further and further into hackery.

And cases like this expose the dangers of said hackery. At the end of the day it was disgusting and inexcusable for Justin Trudeau to use the very first National Day For Truth & Reconciliation to take a family holiday. And the legions of Liberal hacks making apologies and rationalizations for him are only helping to perpetuate the issues that have led us to needing a day for Truth and Reconciliation in the first place.

Belated Truth & Reconciliation Day Post

 

I don't follow things as closely as I did a decade ago. For the past few days I've been distracted by changing jobs, a leaky hot-water faucet in my bathroom, and other things. I didn't know about this "National Day For Truth & Reconciliation" that happened yesterday until I came home from work and checked out my usual circuit of bloggers.

In atonement, I'll simply re-link to two resources. The first is an editorial from Suzanne Shoush (with Lisa Boivin) attempting to preemptively shut-down anticipated racist nonsense and denialism as a response to the day:

Denying all harm is in itself incredibly harmful. It is rooted in a deep history of racism – and always implicates Indigenous people as being responsible for their own “misfortunes.” Could there have been some moments of kindness in the residential school system? It’s possible. But the system was rooted in genocidal ideation, with the goal of killing the Indian in the child, destroying communities and erasing culture. 

...

As long as we fail to see the system for the evil that it was, in all its entirety, we will never, ever make progress in reconciliation. Bias against Indigenous people and a deeply rooted belief in our “inferiority” will persist. 

Second is a link to the Truth and Reconciliation Commmission's "Calls to Action" page. 

Canada is a rich country. And a lot of that wealth comes from natural resources from unceded lands that we essentially steal. We owe several debts to the First Nations. And we're way behind in making payments.

Wet’suwet’en Protesters being manhandled by RCMP