I can't speak or understand German, but if anyone who reads this can, you can check this out. (I liked what I read about this guy.)
Yeah, I'm still busy.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Torture Never Stops
I actually feel like saying a lot but i don't have the time or the energy to say any of it. So here's a video:
G'night all. (Darn fruit-flies!)
G'night all. (Darn fruit-flies!)
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
More Random Thoughts About Rob Ford and His Stupid Supporters
Thirty-nine percent of uber-moron mayoral candidate Rob Ford's supporters like him A LOT. And why shouldn't they? Stupid people have to stick together.
Big surprise: Fuck-head Ford's budgetary numbers don't add up. They're nonsense. In this he shares a lot with Fuck-head Finance Minister Flaherty.
But here's the thing, ... if Ford wins and inflicts his disastrous delusions up Canada's largest city, don't expect his disgustingly stupid, lying, hypocritical, howling ignoramus supporters to admit that once more, their stupid decisions and their stupid leaders have destroyed anything.
These dishonest, cowardly scum blame Obama for everything that's wrong economically when the fucking financial crash and recession clearly started the previous September with bush II. The shit was hitting the fan at least four months before Obama took office. But these die-hard shit-heads are so debased as to imagine that bush II's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were successes!
The same fools refuse to admit that Mike Harris was a disaster. That stephen harper is not a catastrophe. Being a right-wing stupid fool means never having to say you're sorry.
Fuck 'em.
Big surprise: Fuck-head Ford's budgetary numbers don't add up. They're nonsense. In this he shares a lot with Fuck-head Finance Minister Flaherty.
But here's the thing, ... if Ford wins and inflicts his disastrous delusions up Canada's largest city, don't expect his disgustingly stupid, lying, hypocritical, howling ignoramus supporters to admit that once more, their stupid decisions and their stupid leaders have destroyed anything.
These dishonest, cowardly scum blame Obama for everything that's wrong economically when the fucking financial crash and recession clearly started the previous September with bush II. The shit was hitting the fan at least four months before Obama took office. But these die-hard shit-heads are so debased as to imagine that bush II's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were successes!
The same fools refuse to admit that Mike Harris was a disaster. That stephen harper is not a catastrophe. Being a right-wing stupid fool means never having to say you're sorry.
Fuck 'em.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Burma VJ
Watched the movie Burma VJ (VJ="video journalist") and I've got mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's the real deal. A black-and-white struggle between an unpopular, corrupt, military dictatorship on one side and incredibly brave, civil rights-democracy champions on the other. More than this, the documentary footage, which was only supposed to show a slice-of-life look at the everyday work of these underground video journalists, ended up showing one of the most massive public protests against the military dictatorship since the national uprising (which had been crushed) in 1988.
But watching these people fighting for democracy also made me depressed, knowing how corporate-capitalism has rendered democracy in the "advanced" countries into a revolting farce (with the current absolute stupidity of the two parties of Wall Street in the USA showing the absolute depths that pure capitalist culture can drag a political culture down to).
As well, watching the movie made me think about the futility of traditional tactics of pro-democracy movements, both in the world's dictatorships and in the nominal democracies. You see, in the film, the dictatorship doubles the price fuel, which effectively doubled the price of many necessities (bus fares, food, cooking oil, etc.,) and this sparks massive discontent. The dissent is muted however because the dictatorship has thousands upon thousands of spies and informants everywhere and if one is heard criticizing the regime it could lead to imprisonment and torture. Over a couple of days, first a single protester, then a small group of protesters, stage anti-government demonstrations in Rangoon's market, which are quickly smashed. But then, Buddhist monks march to protest the economic policies and the suppression of democracy and the government is temporarily confused. The people are devoutly Buddhist and monks aren't supposed to be touched. For four days the monks march and more and more people join them, and I could imagine the generals arguing whether to let them march and let the movement peter-out, or whether to crush them before the protests turn into a whirlwind that can't be controlled.
In the end, the monks are attacked in the night and only a few manage to make it out to the next day's protests which are led mostly by students. But against the students the government has no compunction about firing live ammunition and the protests are destroyed. And the thirty-year dictatorship survives to oppress for another year or decade or whatever. The VJ's, by smuggling out the images of the protests help tell the world about this democracy movement, the weakness of the regime, and the violence of the authorities.
It's depressing to watch. Both because the protests are crushed but also because of the wider reality. At certain points in the movie, these people trapped in this horrible situation wonder if the rest of the world cares about what's happening in Burma. I could tell them that people do care, just like they care about Darfur, and Haiti, and Pakistan, and everywhere. The problem is that people's knowledge about what to do is hampered by ignorance as to how the world works and ignorance about the culpability and evil of their own governments. At one point in the film, the importance of the VJ's work is shown by a clip of the embarrassingly stupid bush II stumbling through a statement about the horrible oppression of the Burmese dictatorship! To the sane minority in the world, listening to a moronic war criminal exercising his ginormous hypocrisy muscles is painful in the extreme, but far too many millions of people saw him as the "leader of the free world" the "world's greatest democracy" and they expect that the USA will right wrongs and defend the weak anywhere and wonder why it doesn't.
Finally, what I've been saying for quite a while as "thwap," ... we really don't know how to respond to this evil. In Burma, they marched and the shouted, until they were attacked, imprisoned, or mowed-down in the streets, upon which they stopped marching and shouting. Here in Canada, where our masters have the inconvenience of our already possessing certain political and civil rights, work mightily to nullify these rights. They have ENTIRELY SUCCESSFULLY engineered a transfer of wealth from the vast majority to a tiny minority and through propaganda and outright lies have managed to make the middle-levels blame the poorest and the weakest for their problems. In this process, the lies and propaganda and the POWER of the capitalist elites have even served to make left-wing politicians move steadily rightward as their own thinkers come to see the failed neo-liberal consensus as the only option.
The small minority of people who actively protest are marginalized, demonized, attacked and their civil rights are routinely violated, and the general public yawns in indifference at this and at wholesale shredding of the democratic process and the rule of law. But even this small minority of people who know better than most can't seem to shake the delusion that we can change our evil elites by marching and shouting. If only there are enough of us marching and shouting, things will change.
No. The situation in Burma shows that IF we were to somehow miraculously break through the barriers of delusion and apathy created by the dominant propaganda, and we were to get millions of people in the streets across Canada, if our elites were truly threatened, they would simply turn the guns on us. If things got that bad that we could get millions into the streets, the elites would have been simultaneously getting thousands of assholes onside with paid positions as informants and spies, the police would be staffed by people who hate and loathe the poor, and the loathsome brutality of the Toronto G-20 would be magnified a hundred-fold. Finally, the military, fed a steady drum-beat of anti-democratic sentiment (going on now I'll bet as their officers explain that dissent against the occupation of Afghanistan is the equivalent of spitting in their faces and wishing for their deaths) would turn their guns on us with the same efficiency of the Burmese military.
We need street protests, speeches. We need an activist oppositional newsmedia. We need a coherent theory of political-economic democracy. We need a courageous and militant political party. We need a courageous and militant protest movement. And we need to think seriously of getting all these things to work in the face of a capitalist elite that suffers no moral qualms over employing DEATH SQUADS to destroy opposition to a system that perpetuates massive inequality.
It's a huge job.
But watching these people fighting for democracy also made me depressed, knowing how corporate-capitalism has rendered democracy in the "advanced" countries into a revolting farce (with the current absolute stupidity of the two parties of Wall Street in the USA showing the absolute depths that pure capitalist culture can drag a political culture down to).
As well, watching the movie made me think about the futility of traditional tactics of pro-democracy movements, both in the world's dictatorships and in the nominal democracies. You see, in the film, the dictatorship doubles the price fuel, which effectively doubled the price of many necessities (bus fares, food, cooking oil, etc.,) and this sparks massive discontent. The dissent is muted however because the dictatorship has thousands upon thousands of spies and informants everywhere and if one is heard criticizing the regime it could lead to imprisonment and torture. Over a couple of days, first a single protester, then a small group of protesters, stage anti-government demonstrations in Rangoon's market, which are quickly smashed. But then, Buddhist monks march to protest the economic policies and the suppression of democracy and the government is temporarily confused. The people are devoutly Buddhist and monks aren't supposed to be touched. For four days the monks march and more and more people join them, and I could imagine the generals arguing whether to let them march and let the movement peter-out, or whether to crush them before the protests turn into a whirlwind that can't be controlled.
In the end, the monks are attacked in the night and only a few manage to make it out to the next day's protests which are led mostly by students. But against the students the government has no compunction about firing live ammunition and the protests are destroyed. And the thirty-year dictatorship survives to oppress for another year or decade or whatever. The VJ's, by smuggling out the images of the protests help tell the world about this democracy movement, the weakness of the regime, and the violence of the authorities.
It's depressing to watch. Both because the protests are crushed but also because of the wider reality. At certain points in the movie, these people trapped in this horrible situation wonder if the rest of the world cares about what's happening in Burma. I could tell them that people do care, just like they care about Darfur, and Haiti, and Pakistan, and everywhere. The problem is that people's knowledge about what to do is hampered by ignorance as to how the world works and ignorance about the culpability and evil of their own governments. At one point in the film, the importance of the VJ's work is shown by a clip of the embarrassingly stupid bush II stumbling through a statement about the horrible oppression of the Burmese dictatorship! To the sane minority in the world, listening to a moronic war criminal exercising his ginormous hypocrisy muscles is painful in the extreme, but far too many millions of people saw him as the "leader of the free world" the "world's greatest democracy" and they expect that the USA will right wrongs and defend the weak anywhere and wonder why it doesn't.
Finally, what I've been saying for quite a while as "thwap," ... we really don't know how to respond to this evil. In Burma, they marched and the shouted, until they were attacked, imprisoned, or mowed-down in the streets, upon which they stopped marching and shouting. Here in Canada, where our masters have the inconvenience of our already possessing certain political and civil rights, work mightily to nullify these rights. They have ENTIRELY SUCCESSFULLY engineered a transfer of wealth from the vast majority to a tiny minority and through propaganda and outright lies have managed to make the middle-levels blame the poorest and the weakest for their problems. In this process, the lies and propaganda and the POWER of the capitalist elites have even served to make left-wing politicians move steadily rightward as their own thinkers come to see the failed neo-liberal consensus as the only option.
The small minority of people who actively protest are marginalized, demonized, attacked and their civil rights are routinely violated, and the general public yawns in indifference at this and at wholesale shredding of the democratic process and the rule of law. But even this small minority of people who know better than most can't seem to shake the delusion that we can change our evil elites by marching and shouting. If only there are enough of us marching and shouting, things will change.
No. The situation in Burma shows that IF we were to somehow miraculously break through the barriers of delusion and apathy created by the dominant propaganda, and we were to get millions of people in the streets across Canada, if our elites were truly threatened, they would simply turn the guns on us. If things got that bad that we could get millions into the streets, the elites would have been simultaneously getting thousands of assholes onside with paid positions as informants and spies, the police would be staffed by people who hate and loathe the poor, and the loathsome brutality of the Toronto G-20 would be magnified a hundred-fold. Finally, the military, fed a steady drum-beat of anti-democratic sentiment (going on now I'll bet as their officers explain that dissent against the occupation of Afghanistan is the equivalent of spitting in their faces and wishing for their deaths) would turn their guns on us with the same efficiency of the Burmese military.
We need street protests, speeches. We need an activist oppositional newsmedia. We need a coherent theory of political-economic democracy. We need a courageous and militant political party. We need a courageous and militant protest movement. And we need to think seriously of getting all these things to work in the face of a capitalist elite that suffers no moral qualms over employing DEATH SQUADS to destroy opposition to a system that perpetuates massive inequality.
It's a huge job.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Canadians are not revolutionaries
Most of us are still far too comfortable. Even those of us who know that the system is evil and doomed don't feel the dagger in our side telling us it's do or die. We feel that we can wait, or that, given the difficulties of the task (revolutions are messy, uncertain affairs) we have to wait, for other necessary conditions to appear.
But the fact of the matter is that we're not doing enough now, and we are certainly doing far too much useless bitching about how flawed the system is and not enough thinking about how, given the reality that Canadians aren't going to revolt, how we are going to devise a non-violent, non-revolutionary revolution.
Alas, alack! So many "progressives" who at least recognize the problems, are STILL, after all this time, willing to waste their energy defending and advancing the Liberal Party of Canada (that destroyed the welfare state during the 1990s, that pillaged the EI program, that overthrew the democratically elected government of Haiti, that is led by men (Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae) and was led by men (Paul Martin, John Manley) who would have taken us into Iraq. Who did take us into Afghanistan. The fact that John Manley went on to become the president of the elitist, anti-democratic, neo-liberal snake-oil peddling Canadian Council of Chief Executives, doesn't seem to register with such people. They'll even join their US-American liberal allies by defending the Wall Street servant, the murderous, psychopathic, lying Barack Obama against his critics.
For a guy who thinks the NDP is the best option of a bad lot, the reality that people who accept the premises of the problem still think the Liberals are even an option is a depressing thing indeed.
I have my own prescriptions, and I've mentioned them before, but I'd be interested to know what other people recommend given the circumstances. Besides bitching about things on the internet, attending a useless rally, and voting for the likeliest left-political option, ... what can we do to effect genuine change?
But the fact of the matter is that we're not doing enough now, and we are certainly doing far too much useless bitching about how flawed the system is and not enough thinking about how, given the reality that Canadians aren't going to revolt, how we are going to devise a non-violent, non-revolutionary revolution.
Alas, alack! So many "progressives" who at least recognize the problems, are STILL, after all this time, willing to waste their energy defending and advancing the Liberal Party of Canada (that destroyed the welfare state during the 1990s, that pillaged the EI program, that overthrew the democratically elected government of Haiti, that is led by men (Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae) and was led by men (Paul Martin, John Manley) who would have taken us into Iraq. Who did take us into Afghanistan. The fact that John Manley went on to become the president of the elitist, anti-democratic, neo-liberal snake-oil peddling Canadian Council of Chief Executives, doesn't seem to register with such people. They'll even join their US-American liberal allies by defending the Wall Street servant, the murderous, psychopathic, lying Barack Obama against his critics.
For a guy who thinks the NDP is the best option of a bad lot, the reality that people who accept the premises of the problem still think the Liberals are even an option is a depressing thing indeed.
I have my own prescriptions, and I've mentioned them before, but I'd be interested to know what other people recommend given the circumstances. Besides bitching about things on the internet, attending a useless rally, and voting for the likeliest left-political option, ... what can we do to effect genuine change?
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
High Levels of Unemployment is a Bad Thing
short n' simple:
Why should governments care, above all else, about keeping unemployment down and ensuring that the greatest number of people get a fair share of the economic pie? Because if you don't, bad things happen.There.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Inside the Mind of a Rob Ford Supporter
Rob Ford is currently the front-runner in the race to be Toronto's mayor. He's apparently a stupid, oafish, incompetent dunce. The Toronto Sun is in love with his fat ass and fellates him on a daily basis. For them, it's a contest between stereotypical downtown lefty elitists and respectable salt of the earth suburban folks and the latter side is winning.
For the Sun's gang of con-men, assholes, and complete morons, the irritation and exasperation of downtown lefty elitists is highly amusing. Whatever gets them riled up is great for the Sun and its readers. What they can't seem to grasp is that intelligent, progressive people have good reason to be angry at the thought of mass stupidity imposing yet another incompetent, evil government upon them, and the extent of this mass stupidity is frustrating. I mean, what? We're supposed to be indifferent to a drunken clod like Ford running Canada's largest city the same way the other heroes of the stupid voters' bloc, Mike Harris in Ontario, stephen (accessory to child rape in Afghanistan) harper in Canada, or bush II in the USA, did?
You wonder what goes through the brains of such nitwits:
"Tee-hee! It drives the lefties NUTS when we vote for so-called 'morons' like Rob Ford!"
"Tee-hee! It drives the other tenants NUTS when I set fire to the building!"
"Tee-hee! My wife HATES it when I take the kids for a drive when I'm drunk out of my mind!"
Tee-hee indeed.
For the Sun's gang of con-men, assholes, and complete morons, the irritation and exasperation of downtown lefty elitists is highly amusing. Whatever gets them riled up is great for the Sun and its readers. What they can't seem to grasp is that intelligent, progressive people have good reason to be angry at the thought of mass stupidity imposing yet another incompetent, evil government upon them, and the extent of this mass stupidity is frustrating. I mean, what? We're supposed to be indifferent to a drunken clod like Ford running Canada's largest city the same way the other heroes of the stupid voters' bloc, Mike Harris in Ontario, stephen (accessory to child rape in Afghanistan) harper in Canada, or bush II in the USA, did?
You wonder what goes through the brains of such nitwits:
"Tee-hee! It drives the lefties NUTS when we vote for so-called 'morons' like Rob Ford!"
"Tee-hee! It drives the other tenants NUTS when I set fire to the building!"
"Tee-hee! My wife HATES it when I take the kids for a drive when I'm drunk out of my mind!"
Tee-hee indeed.
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