We Need a Revolution: Part I

 

When capitalism went down hard in the 1930's the world was unquestionably ruled by white people.  China was a basket-case and India was ruled by the British.  Japan was the only truly autonomous non-white country.  And in the 1930's, the rise of tariffs in all the European nations, the USA and Canada, and Australia, devastated its export-oriented economy.  There was a non-capitalist Soviet Union pursuing its autarchic industrialization.  This served as something of a threat to the capitalist countries.  Communists and socialists were rising political movements in their many countries.

Then, as now, the capitalist class wasn't smart enough to have invented fascism to save itself from socialism.  Mussolini, Hitler, and others arose organically from out of societies in distress from the First World War, the post-war dislocations and then the Great Depression.  But the capitalists in Germany and Italy certainly saw how useful they were to push-back against the challenge from socialism.

Britain, France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, the USA, Australia, ... maintained social cohesiveness.  Spain went socialist and then fascist.

In the end there was a war. The war replaced the suppressed demand caused by capitalist inequality and financial sector mismanagement with state-subsidized industrial expansion and full employment.  The greater resources of the USA, the British Empire and Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union produced their victory and gave the Soviets forty-five years of super-power status and the Anglo-American bloc seventy-five years of global hegemony.

 

We are now in a slow-motion, drawn-out crisis similar to that of the 1930's.  Except that this time our elites have knowledge (gained through experience) of public-sector financial management, social welfare policies, and propaganda/brainwashing that has so far allowed them to remain securely in power.  They aren't consciously aware of this.  They insist on un-learning all the lessons of the 20th Century in order to pursue their short-term narcissistic goals.  But the continued immiseration of the public, the homeless camps, the rise in household debt and insecurity, combined with the growing inequality and the elites' short-sighted, narcissistic compulsions to destroy those few remaining concessions to reality (welfare policies, fiscal and monetary policies) that provide some comforts for the majority, have led to a return to fascism.

Immigrants are scapegoated.  The lunatic ambitions of the zionist project in Palestine add fuel to the fire.  But this time there is no Soviet Union and no domestic socialist movements of any importance.  There is China and there is Russia.  Czarist Russia was backwards.  Soviet Russia was a clumsy colossus.  21st-Century Russia is a battle-hardened, resource-rich, militarily-focused, independent, more experienced nation.  Sobered by the fall of its empire.  China is an economic and technological powerhouse constrained by the realization that when the population's needs outstrip the resource/economic base, disaster follows.

India, Brazil, Iran, ... they're strong enough now to not be pushed around.

 

Israel was the last case of a European colonialist society.  After 1945, every other European imperialist country was formally giving up their colonies and settler societies (like Canada, the USA, South Africa) had ceased expanding, with some of them making at least token steps to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of their racist pasts.  (South Africa intensified its apartheid regime, but formal white political supremacy was lost by the 1990s.)

Meanwhile, Israeli zionists, to the present day, believe in a racist fantasy of a "Greater Israel" encompassing parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.  This while continuing to impose intense apartheid on the Palestinians and expanding into the West Bank.

If Israel and the United States are defeated in this crisis, it means the end of the era of European imperialism.

And that is what Iran intends.

Can Iran do it?

 I don't know obviously.  I don't have access to inside information about US and Israeli military hardware and tactics.  Nor do I have information about the Iranian side.  But I have seen the results of the June 2025 12-Day War and I saw that Israel was about to be completely overwhelmed after two weeks of fighting.  And at that time, Iran hadn't taken out the USA's radar installations in the Arab puppet dictatorships.  Last June, the Israelis had 30 minutes warning about incoming Iranian strikes.  Now it's said that is down to five minutes.

That's enough for today. 

Pete Hegseth: Imbecile

War Secretary Pete Hegseth is the sort of person whose entire view of the world is informed by his utter stupidity.  He does not understand the world.  He does not understand how to interact with other people.  In his confusion he says and does stupid things and other people regard him with contempt.  Which makes him angry.

Hegseth is afraid of things that are different from him.  That is why he is racist.  He has to believe that he is superior to non-white people because he sees them as threats and the best way to defend his self-confidence is to embrace white supremacy. 

Hegseth is afraid of women because they are different.  Because they sometimes deny him what he wants.  He is vulnerable to them and it kills him when they don't submit to him.  So he joins a church that ordains that women be submissive to men and even advocates taking the vote away from them.

I don't know if Hegseth suffered any childhood traumas (physical or emotional abuse, neglect, whatever) or if his fear and anger is entirely caused by his inherent stupidity.  Whatever the case, Hegseth needs to belief in large, powerful things to sustain his world.  "God" is the all-powerful father who controls the world.  The United States of America is the greatest country in the world and can  never be defeated.  Trump is the great leader, chosen by God to lead the USA to greatness by defeating its enemies, both external and internal.

It is an indictment of USA society that such a complete moron has been elevated to such a powerful position.  The whole MAGA movement is so disgustingly stupid and deluded.  The whole culture has become so debased.  Some sort of painful catharsis will be needed to purge this whole political bowel movement.

This regeneration will not come from the Democratic Party.  A political party that leaves itself open to criticism when its members complain about Trump's genuine mental deterioration, because they themselves foisted a dementia patient on the electorate, is incapable of what is needed to bring sanity back to the USA.

 

CBC Propaganda

 

All throughout the ongoing genocide in Gaza, if you only read CBC News, you could be forgiven for not grasping that a genocide is happening.  So little did they, and have they, reported on it.  (This would not be the case for readers of the National Pestilence, which celebrates it with perverted glee, like the racist subhumans that they are.)

I suppose the same could be said about the Russia-Ukraine War.  There you would have followed a progression; from Russia's dastardly "unprovoked" assault, to their subsequent unspeakable war-crimes, to their massive losses and incompetence combined with their grave threat to rest of Europe despite those losses and incompetence, arriving at the "stalemate" as plucky Ukraine continues to resist.  (Case in point of the mainstream media's garbage coverage was their reporting that the [fascist] Azov Battalion's being "evacuated" from Mariupol.  When, by "evacuated" they meant "surrendered into captivity.")

If you blinked you might have missed the perfunctory mentioning of Putin's attempts to negotiate a security agreement with NATO based on formalizing Ukraine's traditional neutrality and their dismissal by NATO leaders.  Perhaps the CBC provided some brief accounts of the massive corruption that diverted NATO military and financial assistance for Ukraine into the black market and the bank accounts of prominent Ukrainian oligarchs, politicians and fascists.  Some US mainstream media reported briefly on these matters so it's possible the CBC did as well.  

But the main point is that from any of these mainstream propaganda outlets, you would never know that Ukraine has lost at least 500,000 men while Russia's losses are only around 100,000 (as opposed to the million dead that NATO claims). 

I've noticed the same sort of stupidity when it comes to reporting about the USA and Israel's illegal attack on Iran.  Let's look at today's headlines as a case in point:

Mark Carney's Brain

 

I got a delayed email response from my MP about how the Liberals' wholehearted support for Israeli apartheid and genocide has disgraced Canada.  It was a pathetic string of empty platitudes and outright stupidity.  We continue to give aid through UNRWA.  Canada remains committed to a "Two-State Solution."  Canada defends Palestinian self-governance without Hamas.  

A Quick Note About Money

 

According to the Canadian government itself, they've provided $25 billion in aid to Ukraine since 2022.

 Since February 2022, Canada has committed more than $25.5 billion in overall multifaceted aid to Ukraine, including $8.5 billion in military assistance.

Trump Attacks Iran

 

Despite his bluster, Trump was sensing that his moment had passed.  The Supreme Court struck down his tariffs.  His raping of adolescent girls was going to come back to haunt him.  Whatever he thought would be the results of his economic policies, the reality is that the people are worse off than they were before.  And this includes those who believed he'd bring prices down soon after his inauguration.  He doesn't know what to do about the Russia-Ukraine war because he's delusional and stupid.  He genuinely believes the garbage about Russia's having suffered over a million dead from wasteful "human wave" assaults for which there is no photographic evidence.  Therefore he thought that Putin was desperate for peace at any price. At the same time, Trump very much wanted to exploit and humiliate Ukraine.  So he pursued a contradictory policy of insulting both parties in the war and has consequently achieved nothing.  He has successfully created a racist gestapo in ICE (while the pathetic Democrats have done nothing to restrain them other than to request they wear body-cams to record their criminal behaviour) but he has been disappointed that the bulk of the US-American people don't share his racist glee at the abuse of brown people.  In his ignorance and stupidity he didn't anticipate the cratering of support for him from Latinos as they all find themselves targets for racist abuse from ICE agents (some of whom are Latinos themselves, because racists are uniformly stupid people).

Ford Orders Province's Workers Back To Offices But Has No Spaces For Them

 

Corrupt, gluttonous Doug Ford just didn't like the idea of many of the province's workers continuing to do their jobs remotely, from home.  Just because it didn't negatively impact productivity and some reports said it was more efficient as well as better for the workers' mental health was no reason to carry on with the policy (first adopted in response to the COVID pandemic).  No.  "Work" is performed in a "workplace" under the direct supervision of a BOSS.  That's just the way that things are.  So back to the office they had to go.

Except, fat, lazy, stupid, corrupt Doug Ford didn't bother to rent the space for his workers to go to:

Will the Orange Degenerate Attack Iran?

 

 

Trump's massive military build-up in the Middle East is continuing.  As are the "negotiations" in Geneva, mediated by Oman, between Iran and Trump's envoys.  Israel wants an attack, which means the Democratic Party will be okay with it.  Trump admits to being a willing hireling to the zionists.  But Trump must be hearing information from military people that attacking Iran could lead to a very destructive, long-term struggle.  Destructive to Iran, but also destructive to the USA and Israel.  Trump is being pushed into conflict by zionism and imperialism and his own hubris, and pulled from conflict by his self-interest and cowardice.

How did we get here?

How is it that we live in a world where an imbecile and a degenerate like Trump is President?  How does it seem even halfway normal for Trump to be threatening war with Iran at the behest of the genocidal state of Israel, instead of being hounded from office for the revelations from the Epstein files and the fact that half of said files are illegally being withheld? 

Mark Carney and the "Rules-Based International Order"

 

One example of the flexibility and falsehood of international law that Carney admitted to at Davos would be his own theft of $2 billion in Venezuelan gold reserves held in the vaults of the Bank of England.  He was the bank's governor at the time and the UK was (and remains) united in destroying the Bolivarian Revolution that wanted to use Venezuela's oil wealth for the general population rather than local and foreign elites.  Carney's "argument" was that the US puppet/douchebag Juan Guano was Venezuela's legitimate ruler and not Maduro who had only been elected in an election.

Thoughts

 

With the lawless, murderous, racist, sexist, fascist ramapaging of the Trump regime in Minnesota, and the way that the regime's supporters not only defend it, but celebrate it, ... the sickening reality of how debased the world has become is evident for all to see.

Trump represents the evil I said would follow harper's assaults on Parliament

 

If you go back through the pages of this blog to the years when stephen harper was desecrating all of the customs and conventions and the very letter of the law of our parliamentary system, you will see that I was constantly "harping" about how dangerous and disgusting his behaviour was.  I also expressed my dismay at the lack of push-back against harper; both from the super-radicals who believe that the real world is a waste of time and that if only everything magically changed, their little Marxist grouplet or "anarchist" collective would sweep away all before them and so to hell with worrying about something as ridiculous as Parliament and the semi-quasi-democracy it represents  - AND - from the "respectable" left and center who thought shouting "SHAME!!" [leftists] or "Tsk-tsk!" [centrists] was the extent of their responsibilities.

I'm not saying that Canadians' incapacity at resisting harper produced the rise of Donald Trump in the United States.  I'm saying that progressives and leftists failures to counteract the fascist turn of decaying capitalism has produced [in the USA] a fascist movement, united under a grifter, who has, in the real world, with real resources, created an army of lawless goons, inspired by racist ideology, targeting scapegoats and anyone who wants to resist them.

As economic conditions deteriorate, more people become insular, reactionary, "conservative."  We had certain rights under our system of government.  We could have built upon them.  We should be outraged when ... ahh, I've too much to say and no time really to say it.

Remember when harper stymied investigations into human rights abuses in Afghanistan? Remember when he stole an election?  Remember when he refused to provide Parliament with cost estimates of his policies?  Remember when the falsified expert advice to justify cutting funding for KAIROS?  Remember when he used his stolen majority to ram through gigantic omnibus bills?  Remember when Elections Canada refused to seriously investigate his election fraud and selectively granted legal immunity to different sets of witnesses?

As a people, we should be passionate about defending the rights we have.  Instead, the far-left smirks and shrugs their shoulders and says something eloquent about "bourgeois liberties" while the progressives mouth whatever platitudes their own hypocritical leadership in Liberal, NDP, Green, Democratic, whatever parties tell them to say.  (And then hope they forget those platitudes and what they were supposed to represent whenever one of those centrist parties gain power.)  And, of course, the vast majority of people, incapable of lifting their eyes from their own immediate concerns, simply ignore it all as a farce.

We see the results of this massive human-societal failure in the murderous, illegal, unconstitutional behaviour of Trump's ICE.

Iran

 

As I understand it, there are some legitimate economic grievances that many Iranians have against their government.  This was also the case in the early days in the protests against Assad in Syria.  But as with Syria, so too with Iran.  USA and Israeli spies soon attached themselves to these protests and used them as a pretext to violently attack the government.  And if you don't think the US government would start killing dozens of protesters if US-Americans started murdering police officers, just look at that country today, when police there go ape-shit when US-Americans peacefully protest police violence.

Canadians Dying in Hospital Hallways

 

At the time, when I was first reading about Prashant Sreekumar dying in an Alberta hospital's hallway after having waited eight hours to see a doctor, somewhere in a comments section (I forget where) idiots were blaming Justin Trudeau.

Thwap's Reading Achievements for 2026

 Here's links to 2025 Books I & II.  2024's readings.  2023.  September 2021 to December 2022.

Anyway, a few days ago I finished Fresh Green Life by Sebastian Castillo.  

I knew that it was about a guy in his thirties who has been living in self-imposed isolation for a year who goes to a News Year's Eve party with friends and colleagues from his university days.  You can read the linked review if you want.  But I will just say that I enjoyed the book.  If held a few surprises for me as it went along.  I found the language of the narrator a little pompous at first.  I wasn't sure if that was intentional on the part of the writer to mock the narrator, or whether it was the writer's own voice.  Whatever it was, it faded and the rest of the time was smooth sailing.  In the end it was (for me) a hilarious send-up of the lives of academics.  [Here's a link to the narrator's favourite film.]

2026-01-18

Today I finished Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine:

Pappe argues that Israel's creation involved deliberate ethnic-cleansing:

In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine ) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, beginning in the 1948 war for independence and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet , in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units organized by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the “architect of ethnic cleansing. The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948 and 1949, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. 

It's depressing reading Pappe's conclusion, written in 2006, about the slim possibilities for peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, knowing how far from that outcome the reality in 2026 is.  

I didn't know much about the "war" between Israel and the Palestinians and other Arab states.  I had been raised to believe that the Arab states told the Palestinians to temporarily leave so as to be out of the way while they crushed the Israeli state as it was being born.  I never thought that their leaving justified not letting them return, but I learned a long time ago from Christopher Hitchens that there had never been such an order.

The reality is that the Palestinians were hardly armed.  They weren't happy with the UN partition plan but those within the borders of what was to be Israel had resigned themselves to living in "Israel" when the time came.  They weren't prepared for what the Israelis had planned for them.

Iraq, Syria and Jordan sent troops that never left the lands that had been allotted to Palestine by the UN.

Egypt sent a mostly untrained militia into Gaza with little preparation and bombed Tel Aviv and some other towns for a few days.

Jordan's King planned to take the West Bank for himself in return for allowing Israel to take the rest of all that it wanted.

And all of this ethnic cleansing had been planned long before WWII and The Holocaust.  

2026-02-21

I read a fair bit of "OSHO"'s Coming Home to Yourself: A Meditator's Guide to Blissful Living.  And I don't plan on reading more of this book.

 

Some work colleagues recommended this guy.  You can read about him in the link.  I think I'll find books where he talks about other religions and other stuff that actually exists in the world.  Some people swear by meditation and maybe there's something to it.  But OSHO and another guy I read last year say stuff like:

"Maybe it will take six months, maybe a year, but eventually clearing your mind and sitting at peace WILL have a profound effect and your life will be positively transformed."

Either that, or your subconscious makes a deal with your conscious mind (which is worried about the sunk-cost fallacy) and you'll delude yourself that turning off your brain and taking the advice of charlatans HAS led to self-improvement. 

A lot of it is just vague stuff about love and openness and oneness and bliss.  Nothing is described concretely.  The universe didn't make us to feel permanent joy.  I just don't subscribe to this stuff and I'm not going to work hard at turning off my thinking so as to make the suggestions of a cult leader more acceptable to me.

2026-03-10

Last week I finished John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. 

 

The man was a great talent.  The language is magnificent.  It almost redeems the silly story that it's based on.  I'm not the sort of reader that Milton intended the work for.  I haven't even read the Bible.  And I have only a cursory knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics.

Parts of the story that irritated me:  A)  The animals in Eden are just invented by God and named by Adam.  Darwin's Theory of Evolution was hundreds of years in the future, so I can't fault Milton for not inventing any coherent reason for the variety of animals in Eden.  It's just that it reminds one of how empty present-day "creationism" is.  B)  The numerous entreaties of God or His angels to tell humanity not to try to think too hard or question too much.  When you think of the wasted centuries when people were told to focus on their imaginary God and to avoid trying to understand the world.  C) The grotesque misogyny.  Eve doesn't need to be told that she is incapable of understanding stuff about the moon and the stars or any of the other deep concepts that Adam thinks about or discusses with God or the Angels. That the woman Eve is the source of humanity's downfall is obviously the product of a patriarchal religion of a patriarchal society.  All the evil and abuse that men have inflicted on women when inspired by this bullshit story.  D)  Milton's God sets everything up and he knows what's going to happen.  He knew that Satan would escape from Hell and manage to slip past the angels guarding the perimeter of Eden and then seduce Eve into violating the one commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  What supposedly save God from being a sadistic maniac is that human beings have Free Will.  Except that we don't.  E) Milton's hatred of other Christians he doesn't agree with.  Especially Catholic.  I could see him not liking the Dominicans.  But to think that a Franciscan monk, inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, especially one who lived and died before the Protestant Reformation, was going to go to Hell as an infidel, ... it's too much.

 

All that having been said, as someone who believed in this stuff as a child, Milton's language manages to capture the beauty of the idea of the Garden of Eden.  There are parts when he discusses the love of Adam and Eve and it does sound beautiful.  And, the scenes with Satan and the rebel angels have a horrible grandeur.

Here's a quote from the review:

 When reading this epic poem, it’s clear why it has become a classic. There are numerous references to Greek and Roman mythology and to ancient history. I had to check the notes frequently to understand the allusions. It made me wish I knew the classics better. It also made me read slowly. Though we all know the story of the Fall, Milton speculates on many of the issues the biblical account doesn’t explicitly address. We wonder why God allows Satan to remain free to deceive people. We ponder the relationship between the spirit world and the material world. We question what motivates Satan and his forces to oppose almighty God. We are also baffled how people living in a paradise could ever be convinced that God is being cruel and unfair to them. Even though Milton speculates, he at least offers food for thought.

Good times.