So, after hearing about it a few times over the last couple of days, I decided to look it up:
I can't bring myself to watch the video. I just can't. [Same as I was never able to muster the courage or the enthusiasm to watch a video of stephen harper singing.] And that means that I really don't know whether or not the performance included someone singing Neil Young's dystopian lyrics.
It was supposed to be a work of satire. But it is easy for people to take things the wrong way. Even putting "satire" in the title as I did wouldn't prevent an zionist or zionsymp from using my tongue-in-cheek "rethinking" of Adolph Hitler by the same criteria we judge other genocidal maniacs like Bibi and Biden (comparing Hitler's racist obsession with the Jews with Bibi's racist hatred of Arabs; looking at Hitler's opposition to communism according to the way that right-wing shit-fucks like stephen harper etc., similarly see communism as a monstrosity; looking at Hitler's economic accomplishments the way that Biden's supposed good policies today mean that we should OVERLOOK his active support for the murder of two million people. [Obviously if there were six million Palestinians, Bibi and his crew of racist religious nutbars would gleefully starve them all to death without batting an eye.])
But I decided it was too much work for a stupid blog entry so I brought that post to a finish as quick as I could.
I just thought that today I'd write about how, with the Gaza genocide, the Left has once again revealed its pathologies. We seem to be happy just to say that we protested, and then leave it at that. The fact that in a democracy, where there are nominal rights to protest, write to your representatives, and exercise our right to free speech (including the sharing of information via media), the Canadian government can continue to provide diplomatic and material support for an ongoing genocide for eight months, ought to be seen as an indictment of our tactics and the cause for a soul-searching debate about alternatives.
If there is such a debate, I'm not hearing it. It's been the same old thing: The already converted meet outside somewhere, shout slogans, and go home. Don't the leaders of these events ever stop to ponder how the targets of these protests are going to respond to them? Do you really think Justin Trudeau and Crystia Freeland are being kept up at night with fears of these scattered rallies of a few hundred or a few thousand chanters gathering to block traffic every five or so days? Or do you think that they've incorporated such things into their disgusting immoral calculus?
I'm thinking about it right now. I'm imagining that Crystia Freeland is thinking about the zionist vote in Canada and the clear adherence to zionist Israel in most of the mass media. Those voters and that media will turn against her with a vengeance, with smears of "antisemitism" to which her nazi heritage makes her particularly vulnerable.
Now, when I say that much of the Canadian mainstream media is pro-zionist, I'm saying that they're devoted to the idea of Israel as the homeland for the long-persecuted Jewish people. A sanctuary from antisemitism. A modern, democratic state in a region not know for either modernism or democracy (for whatever reasons). I'm not saying that they're craven sycophants of their Jewish paymasters. There is an idealized vision of Israel (just as they have their idealized conceptions of Canada and the USA) that they imagine they're defending by providing cover for genocide.
Freeland is thinking about that, and then she's thinking about her duties as a lieutenant in the USA's global empire. Israel is (primarily through intellectual inertia) seen to represents the USA's interests in the oil-rich Middle East. Therefore it is to be supported. Stepping out of line, just because Israel happens to be acting like Hitler's nazis, is going to be punished.
Freeland has all of that to consider and she weighs it against tolerating peaceful afternoon protests in a few cities, plus some peaceful encampments on University campuses. She thinks about the minor inconveniences that these events cause and decides there's no question but that the costs of ignoring them are far less than the costs of agreeing to their "demands."
The protest movement should have realized this months ago. They should have seen how the media is complicit in omitting the genocide from the daily news cycle, in making the conversation about a rise in "antisemitism." They have noticed how Liberal MPs stopped answering emails and responding to phone calls.
A peaceful movement to end Canada's complicity in genocide, of complicity in the lie of a "peace process," and for a Canadian committment to Palestinian statehood and reconstruction, is going to have to be VAST. It's going to require mobilizing MILLIONS of Canadians. It's got to have clearly articulated demands and clearly defined actions and a goddamned STRATEGY for how to achieve them. It's going to have to figure out how to work around the media's blanket suppressions and distortions and communicate directly with our fellow citizens that our current behaviour is inexcusable. I've always said that while I think the average person has a relatively narrow, self-interested view of the world, that if the truth of some horrible crime is brought before their eyes they're going to respond morally and humanely. We HAVE to get the majority onside. And the movement is going to have to plan for what to do once we have them onside. And its going to have to anticipate the state's violent response to a genuine mass movement and prepare for it.
I mentioned this a couple of times to fellow activists in the groups I signed up to when this crime against humanity began, only to be met with the usual response I get when I try to speak of an alternative to the performative, ineffective tactics; incomprehension and silence.
Obviously, violent protests, involving property destruction and mass arrests would garner more attention and stir the government to action, But that risks individuals suffering personal injuries, escalations of violence, increased media smears and accusations about "terrorism" and a general state crackdown that could leave us weaker than when we started.
So it would be preferable to have a huge peaceful protest movement/general strike against genocide/sit-ins/occupations/boycotts/successful media outreach campaign. And this should have been obvious MONTHS ago. As it stands though, the current "resistance" depends entirely on the limits of Israel's ability to kill Paestinians and the ability of Palestinians to survive without food, clean water, shelter or a healthcare system. While North American "activists" pat themselves on the back for their ineffectual campaigns.
Lastly, I just want to point out that on January 16th of this year I decided to give the Ukraine War a "Friedman Unit" of six months.:
It is January, 2024. I am, in all seriousness, predicting that the Russia-Ukraine War (aka: Russia's "Special Military Operation") will continue for one more "Friedman Unit." ... I'm giving Ukraine six more months when Germany lasted two years following the defeat at Kursk. This is based on my fairly ignorant understanding of the comparable industrial, political, economic and military strength of Ukraine in the 2020's and Germany in the 1940's. ... I don't think that Ukraine in January 2024 has anything near the resources that Germany had in August, 1943. I give them another six months before the current government of Ukraine collapses and is replaced by one more acceptable to Putin's Russia.
It just seemed (to my inexpert eyes) that the Ukrainian state was starting to have difficulty finding the resources necessary to survive, let alone win, this war. The cynical Biden administration has a dull awareness that the war is lost, but, as delusional narcissists, their central concern now is to drag things out so that Ukraine's defeat happens after the upcoming presidential election. In the defective brains of Biden, Blinken and associated shitheads, Biden still has a chance to be re-elected, despite his unpopular support for Israel's genocide, and his shitty, lacklustre accomplishments so far. Ukraine has become hard to fight for in Congress, and they're clearly losing, but perhaps that entire country could just be a sweetheart and continue to have tens of thousands of conscripts die horribly until mid-November? Biden is asking: "Can you do that for me Ukraine? Can you just wait until November 6th before you throw in the towel?"
As if wars can be fought according to the election timetable of senile, racist, patriarchal, self-professed corporate tool!
From what is being reported about the frontlines in Ukraine, their army is crumbling as we speak:
Russia’s attrition strategy will continue to decimate and degrade existing units. As soldiers and commanders die or are wounded, there are no fresh troops waiting in the wings. And, as Ukrainian troops die (or surrender), Russia will continue to press forward on all fronts. There will come a moment when the front will crumble and what is left of the Ukrainian forces on the east side of the Dnieper River will try to scramble to temporary safety on the west bank and try to keep the Russians at bay. I think that could happen by the end of June, but I am confident that Ukraine’s ability to sustain troops in the contested territory will end by September.
I think my 3/4-serious "Friedman Unit" prediction from last January is going to come true and that total collapse will happen in June. And, yes, I notice that my quote from Larry Johnson (who knows more about this stuff, ... vastly more ... than I do) says the collapse will be in September. But this isn't an exact science. The USA's puppet government in Afghanistan had a military that was materially far superior to the Taliban resistance. But it evaporated in two weeks after foreign support was withdrawn. Ukraine's military is materially far weaker than its opponent and it is running on fumes. Only about $13 billion of the recent $60 billion "aid" package from the USA is for new weapons. That will be insufficient. Somebody somewhere said something like "An enemy army resists, resists, until it suddenly stops. Then it collapses." I think Ukraine's army is on its last legs, leaning against the ropes.
We have all been raised to believe that the state of Israel is a virtuous outpost of the glorious Western Civilization in the barbaric and backwards Middle East. It is a democracy where [Jewish] people are free to be straight, gay, trans, ace ... whatever. Women have political and social and legal equality. And they have cutting-edge electronics. Oh yeah, and a public healthcare system that US-American taxpayers stoically deny themselves.
We also know that trying to eliminate an entire people (whether by erasing their culture and their sense of themselves as a people or by simply murdering them down to the last child) is called genocide. And we are told that genocide is a bad thing because the Nazis did it, the Stalinists supposedly did it, the Chinese Communists are doing it, ... and (maybe) us Canadians are doing it and if so, we should stop it. Hindu-Nationalist BJP leader Narendra Modi has the anti-Muslim progoms in Gujarat brought up whenever the USA wants to criticize him for not supporting NATO. So, genocide, and the racism it springs from, are supposedly bad. As a society we appear to be quite clear about that.
I've just started two books. They've not yet been mentioned on the page where I'm sharing my 2024 readings with an inordinately curious world. They won't be added there until I've read at least two-thirds of 'em. I just have some observations from reading the first little bits of them that I want to deal with.
First up is The Panic of 1819 by: The First Great Depression by Andrew Browning (published in 2019).
This is from John Helmer's blog "Dancing With Bears.
A senior Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) officer, who is the Assistant Chief of Staff at the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), faces court martial, “dismissal with disgrace”, and loss of his military pension for having disagreed with Canadian, American, and British military planners of Ukrainian battlefield operations against Russia. His disagreement was in private, when the officers were asking for his professional assessment, and didn’t like what he told them.
Colonel Robert Kearney was charged by the Canadian military police on April 23. The charge sheet says he faces “five (5) x counts of Conduct Prejudice to the Good Order and Discipline pursuant to section 129 of the National Defence Act.”
Public disclosure was delayed by the Department of National Defence in Ottawa until Monday, April 29, when a press release claimed Kearney had been under investigation since another officer filed a complaint against Kearney last November. According to the ministry statement, the military police had “received a complaint of a senior CAF officer allegedly making derogatory and disloyal comments about Senior CAF and NATO members.”
mind the gap ...
CanaCanadian
military sources believe Kearney is being court-martialed now because the Canadian government’s policy to finance, arm, train, plan, and direct Ukrainian operations against Russia is being defeated, and that the military collapse east of Kiev now risks loss of more territory and the lives of Canadians currently working in the Ukraine and at cross-border bases in Poland and Romania. At least one thousand Canadians have been counted by the Russian Defense Ministry on the battlefield since the start of the Special Military Operation; by March of this year, 422 had been confirmed killed in action.
“The timing of the alleged offences,” says a Canadian veteran who served with US and NATO units in Afghanistan, “was when the Germans took over command of NATO’s rapid reaction force which has been building up men and materiel, including heavy tanks and F-16s, in Romania for a plan to attack Russian forces around Odessa. Kearney’s court martial is a warning to his fellow officers not to object or predict destruction of the NATO forces engaged.”
...
If all this is true (and it's obviously true that the guy is up on charges) we can then reflect upon the bogusity of previous and past statements of belief in their "missions" by members of the CAF.
We can also ponder the level of narcissistic entitlement of the nazi psychopath Chrystia Freeland.
And we can just think about how terrifying it is that our "leadership" will punish simple disagreement and continue to lead us into further stupid quagmires on top of Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Just a short little post on something I thought important. I'm working on a longer piece that is taking its time because I'm busy with life.
