April is the busiest month ...

Well, actually, I don't know about that. Read something at straightgoods.ca:

The Conservatives' three budgets have left Ottawa financially incapable of offering any new national social program like affordable housing, higher education or day care. Although overall spending went up, mostly on the military, measures were taken to deplete revenues to the point future governments' hands will be tied unless they raise taxes or run deficits, both prescriptions for political suicide.

I don't know about that "political suicide" thing. If I was King of Canada, I'd raise taxes on people and things that would never vote leftist ever, ... and I'd spend the money on services for the majority, ... and I'd lavish funds on those groups (artists, First Nations, the environment, universities) that could be loyal constituencies. And I'd let the wealthy and the corporations whine and gnash their teeth for four years, until the next election, at which point, all the people who received concrete benefits from the government would be more easily mobilized.

Y'see, the right-wing has learned that if they ignore our protests, our scathing letters to the editor, our think-tanks' critiques, our internet sites, that there are no ill consequences for their legislating against our interests.

Well, it's the same thing for their television and newspaper allies, their corporate speeches, and the blowhards on the radio and in the locker-rooms and bars and their blog aggregates of insanity and stupidity. Fuck 'em. Let 'em bitch to high-heaven. At the end of the day, they're
inconsequential.

Whose side are you on? They're not on our side. Their lies don't matter. Shut 'em out and get on with it.

Those stains should be gone in about six months ...

... (no promises).

That's my little joke about the pie-ing of racist, mindless blowhard, sooper superfluous asshole Thomas Friedman:




Given the mindlessness and destructiveness of his work thus far, this incident prompts me to think that Friedman's due for a career change. He should be one of those guys who gets pies thrown at him for a living at the carnival.

h/t

The Moral Minority

A few Canadians think Canada should "take the gloves off" when it comes to "fightin' terrorism." The ter'rists have no respect for the dignity and beauty of every individual life, and therefore we should disembowel them with chainsaws or something, until they learn to renounce hate.

These Canadians are known as the "Blogging Tories."

Most other Canadians don't appear to be too concerned about Canada's complicity in torture, or imperialism, or genocide. Not enough to write a letter of protest. Or boycott a product. Or rouse themselves to learn more about it after "Deal or No Deal" is over.

A few Canadians protest about injustice and torture. In the last few decades of the 20th century they really became influential. Something happened that made political elites believe that they represented the broad mass of Canadains.

Now it appears that the elites are acting as if they know that human-rights activists are a tiny minority, and that there's no political repercussions for pissing them off.

Alas, alack. T'would appear that they're right.

Busy Weekend

MSI - "Capital-P"

Real News on World Bank & Haiti Impoverishment

Thanks to Jonathan Schwarz at "A Tiny Revolution,"

Ahem,

It's just that kind of day.

First, Canadian Cynic brings our attention to TBogg's musings about the opinions of a US-American woman's political dilemma (she's "wishy-washy" as to whether her country should start leaving Iraq immediately, or stay forever):

Sharm herself is equivocal about Obama and McCain, and she said she is "halfway between" their opposing views on Iraq -- with Obama urging an immediate start on a pullout and McCain saying the United States should remain there in force until Iraq is stable.

To which TBogg responds:

If the terrorists are smart, they will give up on trying to attack us and just sit back and wait, because eventually our entire country is going to be so stupid that people will start sticking their tongues in wall sockets just to see what electricity tastes like.

Then, on CommonDreams.Org, the always good Robert Scheer writes:

Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? ?

He's referring to the fact that many US-American voters are willing to let the ignoramus/asshole/bush II embracer John McCain be their candidate for president. Scheer continues:

As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation’s economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.

Assuming that likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing — an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals — must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses.

It's the putrid results of a debased political system. A debased political culture. Neoliberalism doesn't work for the majority of people. It is designed to benefit wealthy elites. The "neoconservatism" represented by Thatcherism, Reaganism, etc., ... (not the "neo-cons" of US foreign policy) wed neoliberalism to social conservatism. This allows them to appeal to that solid core of the electorate who are more concerned about other people's homosexuality and their own latent homosexuality or bisexuality, ... people more wrapped-up in their own racism and religious delusion to know when they're being had.

Recently, in my comments section, I typed a list of foreign policy successes of the "loony left" that I think bears repeating here, not because I'm saying anything so dazzlingly smart, but because it's a concise presentation of how correct we've been in comparison to how mind-numblingly wrong the right-wing has been:

Let's remember; some people thought that the US was going to go into Iraq, find the WMDs and bring democracy and Western values to that country.

People like me thought that was moronic at the time, and we've been proven right in spades.

Some people thought that we'd go into Afghanistan, bring Osama bin Laden to justice, smash the Taliban-terrorist network and bring peace and democracy to Afghanistan.

People like me thought that wasn't going to happen. Here it is, over 5 years later, and we're still there, killing more people than our enemies, propping-up an increasingly unpopular government.

Some people believed (when they thought about it at all) that Canada, the USA, and France were ridding Haiti of an incompetent, corrupt, dictator, and that we'd bring democracy and development to that poor country.

People like me thought that was all a crock of shit, and now, 5 years later, the UN, Haitian security forces and paramilitaries are killing at will, and crushing the political movement that represents the majority of the people, and the people themselves have been reduced in too many instances, to actually eating dirt.

US-Americans aren't more stupid than anyone else. Their political culture is, because mindless, delusional, consumer-capitalism is completely in control of it. In Canada, Canadian Cynic (and his team-mates LuLu and Pretty Shaved Ape) perform heroic feats daily, exposing the utter mindlessness of the Canadian right-wing. Just like in the USA, the "blogging-tories" are the dregs of a political movement that comprises the bottom-third of the country's mental capacity, just like "pajamas media" represents the 30 percent of US-Americans who are so mentally challenged as to have loyally supported bush II even into his second term. (A number that's down to 25 percent these days.)

None of this nonsense will change until we change the system. Idiotic, corrupt capitalist serving politicians like Stephen Harper, and garbage capitalist media journalism that deceives and blinds the public, neither of these will go away until the capitalist system is removed. Asking for a kinder, gentler, smarter capitalism is a fool's errand. Focus on the possibilities of changing the game altogether.

Interview With "Radio Free Afghanistan" Broadcaster

From straightgoods.ca, a very interesting interview.

The long and the short of it is that according to Jan Alekozai, the people who he's spoken to are quite upset with the warlords' US-backed power in the new Afghanistan. They are corrupt, incompetent, and (with their private militias) ruthless and dangerous. Karzai and his security forces are not trusted. Western aid is misappropriated. Alekozai says that no Afghans that he's spoken with hate the Western forces because they're "foreigners occupying their country." Apparently they accept that they're there for protection. Afghans also welcome the development efforts of the West. (The projects they see completed, as opposed to the money skimmed off by the warlords.)

Personally, I'd hazard a guess that in those areas of the country where NATO bombs have devastated entire villages and ISAF and US forces have shot at farmers resisting the Karzai government, the acceptance of foreign troops is markedly less. Still, it's important to remain sensitive to the realities of local conditions everywhere.