Problems with the world ...

Here are two videos that I just stumbled upon during the last few days. The first one is a Bill Maher, "New Rules" segment from early in Obama's term, during the health care bill "debate."



I don't find anything objectionable with it really. Nothing major anyway. I just think that it's wrong that people applaud his truth-telling but very few of us can articulate a way out of the mess. I'd like to hear someone attempt to defend a system that allows Halliburton to cut corners for profit even it means that "the troops" get electrocuted in the shower.

We know our society is an abomination, but we either do little or nothing about it, or we actively support it.

Here's the second video:



I listened to the guy for about two minutes and then I had to stop. Here's the thing: Even if he ends up making a lot of sense, do you know what I think?

This is a middle-aged white guy okay? And, speaking as a middle-aged white guy, I don't think we should stifle ourselves entirely just because a lot of other white guys have forced themselves upon millions of other people. But at the same time, I realize at this stage in my life, that us white guys have said quite a lot, and if we're going to MAKE people listen to us, we should have something to say.

For me, that guy represents a lot of what's wrong with the Canadian left today. He looks to me like a guy who isn't used to being listened to and so he wants to make the best of it. So he's going to talk goddammit. And that's a problem with us. We want to talk. We want to be listened to. If we were empty air-heads, we would simply lie cheat and steal to get to a place where people would listen to us and all we would have to say would be stupid banalities anyway. But, a lot of us choose not to play the game and as a result we get punished and that opens us up for all the abuses that poverty has to offer. So we're going to force each other to LISTEN while we talk goddammit!!!

As well, the guy is taking a long time to say how shitty the system is. But a long time complaint about the left that I've had is that we're great at identifying problems. What's needed now though are alternatives and some kind of blueprint for getting there.

What Now For Humanity?

They wanted to stay in their camps because they camps were exciting places to be.

But they mainly wanted to stay in their camps because the corrupt, lawless states wanted them to leave their camps.

But the camps are coming down in a flurry of needless state violence.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that the clueless shit-heads who rule us are breathing a collective sigh of relief. (From Barack Obama on down to Ezra Levant.)

But here's the thing clueless shit-heads: The reason we call you clueless shit-heads is because you don't have a clue inside your shit-for-brains.

The political-economic system that you serve has failed, is failing, will fail.

And do you know how badly it will fail?

It will fail so bad that if Rush Limbaugh doesn't invest in enough security, his own "ditto-heads" will pull him from his car and rend him to pieces with their bare hands.

A new world needs to be created. And this world must be one that values human life for its own sake and doesn't seek to make humans conform to some arbitrary profit value system.

And that world will come. Despite the death-spasms of capitalism.

Shocking Video of Tea-Party Rally Tear-Gassed, Pepper-Sprayed, Assaulted: POLICE BRUTALITY!!!!

If anyone has any videos of the Tea-Baggers having one of their rallies broken up, please let me know.

Or is it the case that those know-nothing hypocrites, with their Obama's birth certificate is fake, Obama's stimulus spending is bad, private health insurance profits forever, etc., etc., etc., ... Koch brothers/FOX News funded and promoted shtick means that they're just a bunch of stupid chumps whose delusions help reinforce the power of the elites?

Leave Occupy ALOOOOOONE!!!!

Seriously. Let them do their thing. They aren't hurting anyone. Some people who were already having problems in their lives (including addictions, mental health issues and homelessness) have moved from one street or park to the Occupy camps and have brought their issues with them, but the elite concern for them is transparently hypocritical bullshit.

The idea that they're dirty and dangerous is bullshit.

The idea that others can't use their parks or camp-sites is bullshit.

The idea that they're just squatters with no purpose is bullshit.

Drooling morons like Terry Glavin have taken time off from brown-nosing imperialist torturers like General Stanley McCrystal to yammer stupidly about how the camps are a waste of time.

I'm skeptical of the Occupy Movement. But I support it and that means I support their right to a permanent occupation of St. James Park.

I'm skeptical of all their hopes and dreams but I'm on their side.

What is a movement that is trying to resist corporate control of the state supposed to do when the state arbitrarily decides to remove them? Meekly acquiesce? Yes, it's about more than the camps. I think the Occupiers know that too. They're just resisting for the sake of resisting perhaps. And I'm okay with that because resistance is the whole point.

What Dawg Said ...

In the comments thread of one of his own blog entries:

At least the media seem to some extent to have exhumed the lede they buried. The net result has been to draw people's attention to the one-party state that presently prevails in Canada between elections. The potential for majority governments to behave this way has always been there, but Harper has exploited every opportunity to establish his de facto dictatorship, Who knows? We might get serious electoral reform out of this.

Dawg said two important things there. The first is that there has always been the possibility of a government abusing the latent power that a majority gives. harper, the anti-democratic thug, is the first prime minister to actually do so. Secondly, with the combination of the wholesale failure of the neo-liberal economic model and the naked brutality of "conservatism," there just might be a reckoning for these assholes. I hope to whatever that this is the darkness before the dawn. (But I've been there before.)

Non-Violence

We have to change the cultural delusions about protester violence.

We need to have a mature discussion about this.

Yes: Employing violence against fellow human beings is inherently dehumanizing.

Yes: Peaceful processes have more legitimacy than violent ones.

Yes: Black Bloc window smashing seems formulaic and pointless.

Yes: Violence can spin out of control.

Yes: The police and the other servants of the state are more powerful than we are.

Yes: Employing violence will alienate non-activist citizens and be used to de-legitimize the protest movement.

But that last thing is something that needs to be addressed. There is a reflexive response to violence AT protests, even when it is all employed by the state to crush dissent, that somehow the violence is a product of the protests themselves. Furthermore, the general public is far more tolerant of state violence (unprovoked, excessive, and illegal) than of even justifiable physical resistance on the part of protesters.

Without having to argue for violent anarchy in the streets, we should at least internalize that fighting back isn't always the end of civilization and the precursor to the blood-soaked doom of our species, and then we should try to inculcate in the minds of others the idea that violence has to be put into context. Sometimes people resisting being wrongfully arrested, resisting being carted off to being tortured and humiliated, resisting being truncheoned or pepper-sprayed, resisting being rendered voiceless with their right to peacefully protest being lawlessly crushed, are justified. Sometimes anger against massive injustice and massive crimes is justified.

I am not, at the present time, saying that the people in the Occupy camps that are being razed in the USA should have fought back. It's just that when I hear and read calls from people sympathetic or supportive of the movement saying that violence must NEVER ever be employed, and that one can ONLY win through non-violence, I disagree.

In the first place, non-violent protest has utterly failed to even slow-down the abominations that are the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Saying things like "You might lose if you employ non-violence but you will definitely lose if you employ violence" is just making an assertion. Second of all, we are protesting against massively selfish psychotic murderers. True, they have a powerful state apparatus that can obliterate most opposition. Therefore, violence applied against them is suicidal. On the other hand, if these psychotic, murderous greed-heads know that no matter what they do, the people will be as meek as lambs, then what threat are any of our legal, peaceful protests?

It could just as well be asserted: "If you use violence, you might lose, but if you always practice non-violence you will definitely lose."

Yes, it would be unfortunate if things became violent. Yes, it would most likely be crushed. But could we please abandon the notion that it would be inherently wrong and should always and everywhere be condemned? Could we dispense with the dangerous delusion that physically resisting the injustice and oppression of the state is immoral and shameful?

Robert Fleming Gourlay

His bust is at St. James Park in Toronto, where the Occupy Toronto camp is. How fitting. He was a Quixotic figure, but (as I said at Montreal Simon's place) I truly believe that its the slightly "off" obsessed types who are needed to change things.

Here's the entry for him at the valuable Dictionary of Canadian Biography.