The Stain on Canada's International Reputation Will Be Deep and Long Lasting

 

As I said, the unipolar world is over.  It's beginning was marked with George Bush Sr.'s orchestrated Gulf War, as a demonstration of the oh so brilliant doctrine of "What we say goes!" And it consisted of growing hubris and belligerency up to the present day.  But US capitalists short-sightedly gave manufacturing over to China and Russia recovered from the implosion of the Soviet Union and spreading scientific knowledge around the world has given other countries more weight.  Like England before them, US elites have concentrated on the easier profits of financialization, which has produced trillions in artificial wealth, which requires creative fraud to find new avenues for "investment" producing the 2008 financial crisis and the explosion of inflation in real estate as private sector billionaires exploit every means available to monopolize and gouge.

Not Crazy About NDP dissing the Carbon Tax

 

I never did have much of an idea about how it worked.  I don't know how it was collected or how rebates are determined.  I don't have the inclination to do much research these years.  But sources that I have read and respected for years have said that the Carbon Tax was a good thing and that maybe half of Canadians actually got money back from it.

But being an ignoramus, it's entirely possible that Jagmeet Singh's NDP had a good reason for deciding they don't like it.  But ... aw hell, I guess I should bestir myself to look it up;

...

Well, this guy says that the NDP (federally and in BC) are just stupidly trying to steal something out of the right-wing populist playbook used by Trump and Poilievre.  Stupid because the carbon tax works and stupid because the sort of people they're appealing to (low information, anti-tax voters) aren't going to switch from the Conservatives to the NDP as a result.  

But really, what is the strategic benefit of endorsing your political opponents’ most effective — and disingenuous — position? Do New Democrats seriously believe that ‘axe the tax’ voters are now going to rush away from the dissembling Poilievre and the outright climate-change-denying Rustad? (And, c’mon: anyone who says he believes in climate change, but doubts that it’s a problem, is absolutely in denial.) Nope. Low-information, anti-tax voters will still pick the obvious choice and, David, Jagmeet: it’s not you!

Even more ridiculously, Eby and Singh say they are going to shift to policies that make big polluters pay, taking the burden off the working class. And they’re going to do it by trashing the single tax policy that, through its enforced neutrality, has actually put more money back in the hands of low-income voters. 

The NDP itself is saying something like the carbon tax isn't as good as a massive investment in public transit, energy efficient buildings and clean energy.

Canada has missed every single climate target we have set, and the Liberals are not on track to meet our current weak targets. The Liberals have staked their entire climate plan on the carbon tax. Putting a price on pollution is important, but it's not nearly enough.

While families are being asked to pay more, the Liberals are still giving huge subsidies to big polluters. That’s not right. Canadians want to see real leadership and bold investments in clean energy and sustainable infrastructure that will help us fight the climate crisis while creating good, sustainable jobs.

Instead of the Liberals expecting the carbon tax to be a silver bullet, we need immediate investment in transit, energy-efficient homes and buildings, and clean energy. We need a real plan that supports workers and creates jobs in communities across Canada, instead of continuing to subsidize big polluters."

Yeah, but the carbon tax doesn't hurt.  And distorting it as if its a real burden on most Canadians only endorses the whole right-wing slurry of nonsense about global warming being a hoax by liberal "globalists" to control us.  I think it was a bad move.

"Canada" Doing Its Bit To Start World War III

 

Ukraine's expired president Zelensky did not get approval from the Biden ADMINISTRATION to obtain long-range missiles with which to strike Moscow and other targets inside Russia.  (I say that it was a decision of the Biden ADMINISTRATION because it's an open question as to how much leadership Biden himself is capable of wielding.  What with his crumbling brain and all.)  There seems to be division among Biden's team, with racist, stupid, psychotic Secretary of State Antony Blinken wanting to expand the war and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin being opposed.  Since the US military would be the people who actually deliver the weapons to Ukraine and help with the firing of them into Russia, they can effectively block that happening.

Doug Ford on a Rolllllll

 

This is from an image search for "grifter politician." I didn't want to post a picture of Doug Ford's ugly mug.  I've heard it's a good film.

The fat fuck first bellowed his garbage about CUPE Ontario leader Fred Hahn being a "disgusting human being" and an "antisemite" for condemning genocide-committing Israel's presence at the Olympics.  Then he got enraged at Toronto school children participating in a march in support of the First Nations at Grassy Narrows (supposedly there are two valid "both sides" to poisoning an entire community and then abandoning them).  Now he's yammering like an idiot about building a 50-80 km tunnel under the 401 to alleviate gridlock.

His being premier is an indictment of our society.

Stupid Humanity

 

Desperately stupid Conservative Party of Canada supporters shrieking about Liberal-NDP corruption as if nobody ever heard of Mike Duffy, or Paul Carson.  As if they forgot about their party's disgusting electoral fraud in the 20  federal election.  These imbeciles rant and rave about Jagmeet Singh's pension (supposedly if the Trudeau government falls, Singh will inevitably lose his seat and his MP's pension will be smaller) as if Pierre Poilievre isn't also going to receive a pension.  As if Poilievre hasn't spent his entire working life as a politician.

Catholics continuing to go to their churches on Sundays to take moral instruction from a mobbed-up group of pedophiles.

The Democrat fuck-faces at "DailyKos" believing they're supporting good vs. evil by playing a game of "nuclear chicken" with Russia, using Ukrainian nazis as their proxies.

Fans of Donald Trump.

Deniers of global warming.

Antony Blinken singing "Rocking In The Free World" in Kiev.

People who say that the pandemic was a hoax.

Supporters of Zionism.

Sabrina Carpenter & Gaza

 

When I first got on to Instagram a few years ago, I went to the "search" page and the company already offered me lots of images to look at.  Apparently some people or things are "trending" and they're presented to you even if they're not the sorts of things you post or that you'd have otherwise shown an interest in.

At the time, there were lots of pictures of a WWE female wrestler named Rhea Ripley (who has impressive shoulders) and, also, pictures of a female singer named Doja Cat.  I don't know why Rhea Ripley was trending, but Doja Cat was then currently on tour.

Over the years, along with my searches for cartoonists and friends I notice brief waves of images of various celebrities coming and going.  And, for the past couple of months it's been this young woman named Sabrina Carpenter who has had a big hit with the song "Espresso" which I still haven't listened to.  She appears to be a tiny thing who likes to have a lot of fun and is automatically friends with lots of already established pop-culture celebrity giants.  Some unasked for pop-culture headline on my browser homepage described "Espresso" as enjoyable, meaningless fun.

Good for her.

I like a good time as much as the next person.  We can't spend all our time on doom and gloom.  We don't all have to be saints wearing hair shirts until peace and social justice have been achieved.  So, I personally have nothing against Sabrina Carpenter.  It's just that watching all these pop-culture figures and events going on while Israel is perpetrating a hideous genocide of the Palestinian people, and our own political leaders are providing Israel with diplomatic cover and (especially in the case of the USA, financial and military support without which the genocide couldn't even be carried out) makes me a little nauseous.

Why You Should Care

 

Caitlin Johnstone makes an eloquent case for empathy and connectedness and morality:

Why should you care about Gaza? Because we can’t keep living like this. Our species cannot continue living on this planet as though what happens to other people and other organisms around the world has nothing to do with us. We don’t live in that kind of world anymore.

For better or for worse, we now live on a planet with eight billion humans who are no longer separated by distance in the way we used to be. This species which spent so much of its development relating to itself in units of small tribes is now an intimately networked global community whose behavior is literally altering the face of this planet, and we need to start acting like it. We need to start doing what Einstein called “widening our circle of compassion” beyond our small tribal units of people we personally know and like, or we simply won’t be able to survive and thrive on this planet.

The inability of ordinary people to think globally is directly affecting our lives in the here and now.

I agree with everything that she says there.  Unfortunately I believe, and have said so many times at this blog, that there are large numbers of people (perhaps the majority) who are simply not wired to care about things beyond their immediate circles of self/family/friends/community.  Which isn't to say that they're callous and indifferent about human suffering.  If they become aware of it they'll probably respond in a decent fashion.  It's getting such people aware of things in the wider world that is the challenge.

People who don't read.  People who watch the news but who are so zoned-out that it hardly registers.  People who are so incurious about the world they live in that they can't find their own country on a map.  People who for all intents and purposes imagine that people drove cars in the Middle Ages.

Which is what makes it so criminal for the CBC to have such limited coverage of a live-streamed genocide.  Right-wing shlock outlets like SUN Media or The National Pest will cover Israel's genocidal policies and the protests against them from a pro-zionist, pro-genocide perspective because they're scum.  The people at the CBC know better but, nonetheless, have a job to do in the propaganda system.  So they ignore or downplay the genocide.

Johnstone's article shows the serious consequences of business as usual.

This image search led me to something personally interesting.