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.

 

A Purported Video Purportedly Shows ISIS Burning Someone Alive

Far be it from me to stand up and defend ISIS. I wouldn't deny that such a video could exist. But as I understand it, the existence of the video is based on the testimony of people inside the parts of Syria controlled by ISIS. And, for my money, if western news media are going to dominate the news cycle with something, shouldn't it be DEFINITE news about a video DEFINITELY depicting someone being burned alive?

Because, you know, Kuwaiti ambassador's daughters lying to Congress about Iraqi invaders tossing Kuwaiti preemies out of incubators onto the cold, hard floor and all. (Look it up.)

But, it's probably true. Wasn't there an anti-Assad fundamentalist nutbar warrior who filmed himself eating the flesh of his dead enemy? Why, yes there was! Haven't the US-Americans behaved like monsters in the Middle East? Yes they have! Didn't some Israelis burn a Palestinian boy alive (in retaliation for three of their own sons being killed)? Yes they did!

All violent conflicts attract and produce psychopaths. This isn't news. It's not news. It's propaganda. And hypocrisy.

The Piece-of-Shit, John Baird, Resigns

Is the idiotic buffoon going to collect from the corporate greed-head fucks he serviced so loyally?

Who knows? Baird knows.

A standing ovation for this criminal scum? This self-loathing homophobic mental basket-case? This towering incompetent. This partisan bag-man?

Once again, Canada's political classes show themselves for the hopeless fools that they are.

Bah!

harper's derangement

Yesterday I struggled to try and process the extent of harper's insane delusion and his insane hypocrisy. He both believes in, and cynically exploits the ridiculous idea that "they hate us for our freedoms."

Canadians, he said, "are targeted by these terrorists for no other reason than that we are Canadians. They want to harm us because they hate our society and the values it represents."

Really stephen?  "For no other reason than that we are Canadians"? You stupid, stupid man. You imbecile.

Your wholehearted cheering for Israel's stealing from the Palestinians and murdering them, has no impact on how other people might think of us. Even if you're so ignorant, deluded or callous as to agree with Israel's barbarism, to be classified as remotely sentient, you must admit that this is a polarizing issue, and, indeed, that there are terrorists who terrorize precisely over this issue.

It was stephen harper and his Conservative Party who decided to make us a country fanatically aligned with Israeli expansionism. It is therefore stephen harper and his Conservative Party who must TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for bringing whatever terrorism we suffer as a consequence.

Has Canada not been part of the cruel and horrible occupation of Afghanistan? Have we not been killing Muslims there, propping-up narco-dictators and handing over people to be tortured by them? Yes we have. That is more than just being Canadian. That is more than drinking "Tim Horton" brand coffee while cheering on a hockey fight. That is more than soaking-up some maple-syrup with one's peameal bacon.

Has Canada not been targeting its Muslim citizens with racist harassment and occasionally sending them overseas to be tortured? Yes we have.
stephen harper, it is your "values" of racism, torture, brutality and imperialism that have brought us to this sorry state.

And, even then, ... what are we talking about here? One loser who used his car as a weapon, and one mentally disturbed man, who allegedly produced a video showing him to have been a genuine foot-soldier of international jihad. (Only it's more likely that if this video exists, it only shows him to have been a rambling drug-addict whose danger to Canada would have been eliminated by the de-criminalization of drugs, and funding for addiction and other mental health issues, rather than cynical policies of wholesale spying and trampling of citizens' rights.)

The people who support stephen harper are loathsome in their ignorance and their stupidity. These idiots will agree with "they hate us for being awesome Canadians" and completely deny their responsibilities for what their racist conspiracy theories have produced. They will hoot and holler as the leftards' rights and freedoms are taken away, too stupid to realize that they're their freedoms and rights too. But this is just par for the course. The reign of stephen harper has been "AdScam" on steroids, but they won't admit it. These were the jackasses who screamed that a coalition government was a coup d'etat, but who giggle and snicker at the thought that they got away with election fraud and stolen power. More people died from tainted meat, train derailments, homelessness, and any other consequence of harper's shit-headed policies, but they scream like colicky newborns at the threat of terrorism.