Category Archives: Sovereign Socialist

Political commentary, Sovereign Socialist, What were they thinking?

Ignorant Antagonisms and Petty Aggression: Stephen Harper’s Naive Condemnation of Kim Jong-il

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The Dear Leader had died; rejoice. The man who best typifies the modern-day super-villain is no more. Another in a long line of recently departed ruthless dictators. What a year it’s been!

I am happy this man is no longer breathing, he was a cancerous growth preventing the integration of a small, impoverished nation. He was a kleptocrat. We must shed ourselves of such people if our species is to have any hope for continued evolution.

But to his people, to the North Koreans, he was a living God-King. A contemporary Pharaoh. He, like is father before him, exercised absolute control over a small and nearly completely closed society. Existing in total isolation, the North Koreans are prisoners of their own peversely manipulated minds. They should not be condemned to suffer for the crimes of those who ruled them mercilessly.

This is why I am shocked with Canada Chairman & CEO Stephen Harper and his ‘tough-guy’ comments regarding Kim Jong-il’s death. They are the comments of a foolish individual pretending to understand the significance of this seminal event.

Generalissimo Kim’s death may lead to a new period of détente between the Korean halves, especially considering Kim Jong-un’s youth and European education (he may be legitimately interested in pursuing a reformist agenda, but not if we continue to demonize his father and grandfather). Yet Harper, demonstrating his near total lack of comprehension of the plight of the North Korean people, decided the best approach would be to remind the North Koreans it is their responsibility to choose a new and better alternative to the despotic regime they toil under.

It is not a choice, Mr. Harper.

And, what’s more, the North Koreans cannot hear you. Their media is thoroughly controlled by their government, and we are very, very low on the list of concerns and priorities of the DPRK. So if they aren’t paying any attention to us, why rattle some sabres?

It is the perennial Canadian inferiority complex, manifested by individuals hell-bent on restoring the apparently missing machismo of Canada. Perhaps its because we’ve never started a war for fun and profit, perhaps because our nation was not born of blood and savagery between men on battlefields at home and abroad. Either way, we, unlike many other prominent world leaders, decided not even to suggest that this was a situation worth monitoring, or, that it provides an opportunity for renewed diplomatic efforts. No, quite the contrary, Harper used typical corporate newspeak to describe the ‘moving forward process’ that’s ‘in the hands of the North Korean people’, as a PR hack might in the same fashion after a senior executive is charged for insider trading.

What Harper fails to realize is that the People of North Korea have no choices. Yes, they are slaves. So why condemn them to some awful fate as a result of the decisions made by the kleptocratic oligarchy created by the cartoon character above and his equally unstable father?

And why didn’t a well-respected nation such as our own extend our condolences to the clearly bereaved North Korean People? Whether we agree with their bereavement or not is immaterial, a good chunk of their population can be assumed to be legitimately upset by his passing. And if we want change in the Korean Peninsula, why not open a new door to dialogue with the inexperienced Kim Jong-un?

We know who Kim Jong-il was, the people of the DPRK do not.

For me, this is not that different from Rick Perry’s now infamous Kim John II gaffe.

We should demand a higher awareness from our elected officials, and at least a modicum of decency, diplomacy and above all else sympathy for a mislead people.

Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Perspectives on the City, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, What were they thinking?

Mountains out of Molehills (and Mountains beyond Mountains)

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This man is not yelling in French.

And it’s pissing people off.

This is Randy Cunneyworth, the new Interim Head Coach of the Montréal Canadiens, hired after Jacques Martin was dumped by General Manager Pierre Gauthier on Saturday. He’s been an assistant coach with the Habs for a little while, and distinguished himself with a long career in the NHL.

The problem is that Cunneyworth is unilingually Anglophone and that has upset the hard core lingua-fascists over at Impératif Francais (a Gatineau-based organization) and Movement Québec Francais. These groups have, astoundingly, called for a total boycott of all Molson products, though it is unclear if this includes attending Habs games, buying Canadiens ball caps and hoodies etc. And to be fair I’ve never met an ultra-nationalist who drank Molson; Labatt Bleue all the way.

Today Geoff Molson fired back, stating simply that Cunneyworth is a good choice given the disappointing start to the season, and that ultimately, Molson and the Canadiens’ management pays its dues to the fans, the merciless Montréal fans. Thus, they made the call and will consider Cunneyworth’s linguistic abilities (or lack thereof) as part of their on-going search for a permanent coach. If Cunneyworth can manage to teach himself some half-decent French between now and the end of the season, he’ll be in a better position to graduate from interim to head coach. If he manages to bring home the cup, you and I both know no one will give a flying Philadelphia fuck.

That’s the reality. Money talks, and the Habs need to keep attendance and sales up. A new coach may be able to turn the team around, which in my opinion is considerably better for morale in Montréal and Québec than the apparent ‘attack against Franco-Québecois society and culture’ that is a unilingually Anglophone coach.

What’s flat-out retarded is Christine St-Pierre’s decision to weigh in on the issue. The worst thing the PLQ could do was implicate itself in an issue brought up by radical pseudo-linguists. The smart thing to do would be to focus on your job and not the twitter-verse. We’re paying her to improve the condition of women, culture and communications. Well guess what? Women are still not making as much as men (on average, in Canada), our highest high-speed internet is ludicrously expensive and a hundredth of the speed of Korean or Japanese hi-speed and myopic mono-culturalists are raising this Cunneyworth stink in the first place.

C’mon! Get it together!

It’s not the government’s business. Leave the world’s most successful hockey club alone and let them do what they’ve done so well for years. I love government intervention, but not in this case. There’s simply no good reason.

If Cunneyworth and Molson are smart apart and smart together they may conspire to set Cunneyworth down the fast track towards official bilingualism – intensive courses, Bescherelles, subliminal training, whatever it takes.

Point is it’s clear to the capitalists bilingualism in Montreal is vital, but they’re caught between a rock and a hard place managing a losing team that desperately needs to be shaken up. Another fabricated language politics scandal isn’t going to help anyone, especially not the Canadiens.

So, though Cunneyworth may have a hard time expressing himself to the French media, if he wants to keep his job and bring the Habs to the cup, he’ll learn, and quick too. Be patient. Calm down.

And keep this in mind too – there are only three Québecois on the team. Three. They’re all bilingual and have been trained under Cunneyworth for several years now. They all understand him just fine.

We may have birthed the modern game of hockey here in Montréal, we may have the winningest team in NHL history. Hell, we may have even founded the NHL and saw the first Stanley Cup match. But it’s not our game anymore. It’s a multi-national entertainment corporation with assets, capital and international interests. We’re lucky we still retain such a privileged position within the hockey hierarchy, but who are we kidding? Our success spread the game across oceans and united enemies, all this is true. But to play at the international level, you may need to shed provincial attitudes. We are intimately tied to hockey here in Montréal, of this there can be no doubt, and no reasonable person would actually believe an Anglophone acting-coach poses any sort of threat to that cultural institution and element of local national character. Only weak-willed shrill people with a lot of time on their hands would proselytize such nonsense. And it being a slow-news day (Havel who?), our idiotic mainstream media decided to make yet another mountain out of mole-hill.

The self-depricating, self-perpetuating national inferiority complex rearing its ugly head once more.

How do these things happen?

*** Coda ***

Just realized the song Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) would be a great campaign song for when I run for mayor, though I’d somehow need to explain to those congregated that the band (like myself) is critical of the rampant excess of suburbia, and that I’m not generally in favour of dead shopping malls rising with no end in sight.

How’s subtlety doing these days?

Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Political commentary, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, Sovereign Socialist featured article

Enigmatic Zeitgeist: A Reflection on the Occupy Movement

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This is not law enforcement. This is swine hiding behind a badge, and an abuse of basic human dignity.

Originally published by the Forget the Box

I feel we’re not that different you and I, at least I hope not.

We’re both here, so there must be something that unites us.

And even if it is difficult to pinpoint what precisely brought us here, perhaps that’s only an indication of just how grave the situation truly is. A uniting force we can’t yet properly define is braiding together diverse yet inter-related interests into a solid bond. And yet, all I can see for the moment are individual fibres, weak, limp, useless by themselves.

I’ve been reflecting. Haven’t come up with much – nothing but an endless series of questions whose answers elude me.

I’m writing this having spent several days in mock isolation watching countless videos of police brutality. We’ve all seen the videos I’m referring to. The incident at UC Davis, crackdowns in Syria, Tahrir Square – it’s all starting to look alike.

I’ve spent parts of the last few days engaged in an endless argument with an individual purporting to be a representative of the interests of the Occupy Movement. I’m perturbed not only by the images of police brutality, but also the lackadaisical and highly individualistic responses of people caught in the melee.

The individual with whom I’ve been arguing was advocating that the Occupy Movement must remain a peaceful one (which of course cannot be debated) and was cautioning readers against pursuing anything but complete non-violent protest. But does this mean we can’t take measures to defend ourselves against brutality? And what do the many egregious cases of police brutality say about the Occupy Movement in the first place?

Time and time again (and this has subsequently been reinforced through leaked NYPD internal memos and the fact that the Department of Homeland Security orchestrated a nation-wide simultaneous crackdown in the US) I see so-called law enforcement working together, presenting a solid and united front, acting as a team. They are trained to do so. Perhaps you may feel they do so blindly, and certainly, for all those speaking out against those lambasting all police for the actions of a few, I can understand the desire not to paint the aggressor with a wide brush. But on the flip-side, it is also clear the police are not using the same restraint exhibited by the demonstrators. They are the source of aggression, they are clearly to blame for all instances of violence.

Despite this, the police are getting away with it. Why? Because, as far as their portrayal in the Mainstream Media is concerned, the police look like they’re working together. The same cannot be said about demonstrators, who more often than not appear either to be willing to submit to brutality or, when confronted with brutality, work independently and achieve nothing. How do you think this translates through the media’s biased lens?

I’m not advocating to use of violence to achieve political goals. However, we can defend each other non-violently. Every time I see an abusive cop grab a helpless protestor, I wonder why all the other protestors don’t pull that person back, don’t put themselves between the victim and the cop. We have the mass, we have the advantage in numbers, we have all the reason in the world to demonstrate and protest – we are in the right, our world has been fucked by the elites who rule over us.

The very tenets of our democracy are threatened, perhaps more now than ever in the history of Canada or the United States, and similarly, like no time in our past, the foundation of our progressive society is being hacked-away at by the apparently representative governments of our nations. Yet despite the motivation behind the movement, in no way is the movement coming across as a united front that will not rest until change has been affected.

As long as we operate like individuals our cause is hopeless. True solidarity can only be created when individual men and women decide to shed their individualism for the sake of society. Solidarity occurs when you are willing to put yourself in between naked aggression and your fellow man, to defend a stranger as though they were your brother or sister.

When this happens, the media will show something very different to the viewing public – they will show the progressive microcosm, standing together to prevent the destruction of our society. Then, and only then, when we conduct ourselves as brothers and sisters united in a struggle, will we be able to effectively communicate our wants and desires. Until then, the protestors will be subject to abuse and near-total misrepresentation by media.

Perhaps it is time to back off and re-group. The problems we’re dealing with are not going to disappear between now and the spring, but we need to face an unfortunate climatic and geographic reality. For whatever reason, political and economic power in the US and Canada is concentrated in areas subject to the adverse temperatures of winter, and we can’t sustain large-scale occupations without building proper shelters, not to mention using stoves, which are in turn considered a fire hazard.

Moreover, there is additional problem that the Occupy sites have attracted drug addicts and homeless in nearly every major city. The Occupy Movement is in no position to deal with this reality, and the homeless and drug-addled have more a right to protest their condition and the failures of society than someone sporting the latest in high-tech camping gear.

Communications has been spotty and, again, lacks unity (both internally and between cities). The media can prey on stoned protestors for sound bytes inasmuch as the police can prey on unsuspecting victims to serve as a release valve for pent-up First World frustrations. Our lack of organization is no benefit to our cause, though I can understand the appeal of wanting to completely stand against the grain. The point is, if we wish to demonstrate effectively, we need organization, because societies are voluntarily organized out of solidarity.

Final point. Consider this; in the States, next year is a federal election year. If the Occupy Movement were to stand-down (disappear from the media’s radar completely) and spend the next few months organizing, we could return in the spring with larger numbers, more effective protest, and perhaps even play a role in determining not only the outcome in said election, but perhaps even steer the conversation and shape the dialogue from the outset.

The GOP has spent thirty years pushing the centreline of American politics off into the netherworld of populist, theocratic and fundamentally dishonest conservatism – it’s time for the pendulum to swing back to reality. Now, in my humble and honest opinion, is the ideal time to plan, to organize and to ensure, moving forward, we will be listened to and abuse against the people will stop.

The Spring of 2011 belonged to our Arab brothers and sisters, the Spring of 2012 could belong to us.

Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Political commentary, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, Sovereign Socialist featured article

Grabbing the Bull by the Horns

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Remember, Steve Harper is an evangelical Christian, just like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Mel Gibson

We are becoming the bad guys, and this individual has a lot to do with it.

We have turned our backs on the non-aligned, or Third World, nations we once lead. We have secured unpopular and aggressive allies, some of them threats to world peace and global economic stability, while turning away from the peacekeeping initiatives we were once internationally lauded for. Because of a mass inferiority complex, we’ve decided to support killing as opposed to making lives better, worth living. And we call the poor who die for our national vanity heroes, or worse, warriors. Stephen Harper and the Tories want you to be proud of your warriors, your heroes – proud of what is all I can ask.

We have a federal government that claims a majority and ‘mandate to govern’ though it was elected by scarcely 24% of the eligible voters. We have a government that rejects facts and empirical research for its ‘gut’ instincts and faith in faith alone operating procedure. We elect ‘conservatives’ who conserve nothing, and waste as though it was their right to do so by birth. Our elected ‘leaders’ lack vision, lack leadership, lack competence. We prioritize engine-less fighters designed to fight someone else’s wars over preventing hunger, disease and unemployment. We call ourselves a developed nation, yet refuse to take an active role in development. We reward criminals for screwing the People, and give them life-long Senate appointments. Worse still, because we are lazy, because we refuse to be responsible for ourselves, we live lives of peace and tranquility at the cost of other people’s happiness. We deny others what we take for granted, and for the most part, we have the gall to ask them why they don’t get their shit together? Our pride is a dangerous self-delusion.

And perhaps the less said about human rights, civil liberties and the right to exercise one’s freedom of speech and assembly, the better. The Harper Administration’s brutal repression of dissent since 2006 is shameful for a nation founded on social-democratic principles, such as our own lest Mr. Harper forgot about that. Never before have our fundamental human rights been so consistently violated as they’ve been for the past few years. Police and security forces have been given carte-blanche to abuse while the appointed care-taker federal government introduces bill after bill designed to repress Canadian progressivism and sew greater divisions between the diverse elements of Canadian society. They must be stopped at all costs. How much longer can we afford to be governed by such myopic and self-indulgent swine as this?

I thought the title was apt given its multiple uses. For one, we need to get a grip on the bullshit machine in Ottawa, Toronto and Montréal which has been pumping out regressive, repressive propaganda on behalf of the Tories (and in the name of media balance, which is a whole other steaming pile of BS anyways), inasmuch as we need to grab our economy by the horns and reign it in. We’re far too dependent on foreign investment and non-renewable resource extraction because its a quick buck, but it leaves nothing for ourselves, nor for future generations. Where is our industry? Where are the infrastructure mega projects? These tend not to happen under Tory governments, because they don’t want the responsibility of actually creating and developing a strong, planned economy. No, no – they’d prefer it was dictated by greed, apathy and foreign resource speculation. Well excuse me if I’m not convinced this is the best way to go. No nation has evolved with this as their economic foundation, not at all. Instead, nations like this inevitably fail, with kleptocrats flying high on the taxpayer’s buck before a popular revolution throws them out of power. Is this the path we’d like to go down? I fear we may have gone too far down this road already, as cabinet ministers were rewarded with lucrative government contracts (see Tony Clement’s cash-grab during the 2010 G8/G20 Summit in his Muskoka riding), and defence ministers use search-and-rescue helicopters to pick them up from their vacations.

We’ve dropped the ball and allowed the bottom-feeders into the halls of power. They must be removed, we must take control of our nation, to ensure our future prosperity, to eliminate corruption and graft and to ensure our nation is renown internationally for the good deeds it does. Accepting anything less is frankly unpatriotic, I dare say perhaps even treasonous.

Perhaps it will be the grand moment of self-realization and awakening we are looking for, but Canada’s youth have a responsibility, to themselves and for posterity, to ensure an autocrat like Stephen Harper never has a chance to mis-manage our nation’s affairs again. We deserve better and must demand more from ourselves. Let this be our clarion call.

Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist

An Ironic Coup: Rejecting the Omnibus Crime Bill is your Civic Responsibility

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This article was originally published by the Forget the Box news collective a few days ago.

If there’s one thing I love, its getting caught off-guard and surprised, especially when it comes to Canadian politics, which I generally find infuriating, pedantic and riddled with pseudo-scandals. The events of the past couple weeks, instigated by the Québec justice minister and subsequently supported by the Premiers of Ontario and British Columbia with regards to the Tory ‘omnibus crime bill’ have restored my faith and hope in Canada, if for no other reason than it presents real leverage against Stephen Harper and once again places Québec in the driver’s seat with regards to social policy.

Suffice to say, I’m not a fan of provincialism in general, and I feel that part of the source cause of societal imbalances within Canada has to do with the fact that key elements of our social-state are devolved to provincial administration. Thus, there are inequities within Canadian provinces concerning the quality of healthcare and education. That said the provinces are not independent in any real sense, unless they choose to act in solidarity with one another; at that point, the provinces can wield a veto power even an autocrat like Stephen Harper cannot deny. This particular federalism, which allowed for our Charter and Constitution inasmuch as it prevented its final ratification, is as Canadian as beavers (or polar bears if Senator Nicole “has-too-much-time-on-her-hands” Eaton has her way). And whether you like it or not, Québec’s liberal government has just handed the ‘minority-majority’ Harper Government its first major setback. The provinces will not foot the bill of new prison construction nor prosecutions under an amended criminal code. Without the support of the provincial governments, the Tory Crime Bill may amount to little more than a lot of noise. We should be so fortunate.

What I find particularly interesting with this development is just how quickly an ‘unholy alliance’ was formed between Québec, B.C. and Ontario. Three provinces that hold the bulk of the population, the major cities, the key industries not to mention the overwhelming bulk of ‘multicultural Canada’, modern and internationalist in outlook and disposition. Inasmuch as Québec proclaimed its conciliatory federalism via the Orange Crush, so too have these key provinces demonstrated that they would rather not sell their souls and turn their backs on progressivism, nor on Canada.

Is it me or does it seem some important decisions in this nation have been made ‘for the common good’ from some of our great pillars of individualism? By hook or by crook we will find the bonds that unite us, and if it requires an autocrat to unite Canadians in opposition, so be it. Eventually my hope is that Canadians recognize culture should not be confused with nationalism, that society requires socialism, and that a pan-nationalist social-democratic state is stronger because precise legal concepts are used to define the values, rights and responsibilities of the citizen. Our system is deficient, and I’ve often ridiculed it because it seems designed to be inefficient. The funny thing is that people like Stephen Harper, inasmuch as the Bloc Québecois and Reform Party, came to prominence because of the perception of too much federal power. And today, it comes full-circle, and Canadians can stand proud knowing that when it comes to efforts to undermine our progressivism and the rule of demonstrable, factual evidence, no autocrat can resist the combined power of the provincial governments. What is brilliant is that it unites three embattled and only moderately popular premiers on a key social policy issue – there isn’t much Harper nor the CPC can do at this point aside from engaging in election styled propaganda and smear campaigns. It would be futile.

Today I feel slightly re-energized. The doomsday scenario of an unbridled and potentially mentally unstable Prime Minister running amok tearing out the guts of our society in an attempt to redress a mass inferiority complex seems mitigated by the collaborative strength that I feel best describes Canada. It’s an affirmation of some core beliefs in a time of malaise, uncertainty and instability. And so now the people must rally behind the progressive provincial governments and secure the change we desire. There are five provinces with Liberal or NDP governments and two with ‘Red Tory’ Progressive Conservative leaders – something tells me they may be able to define a better social agenda through consensus than a ‘majority’ government elected by a scant 24% of the eligible voters.

It’s time the power was shifted back to the people – the current situation is no longer tenable. If this means the people rally behind their provincial governments to cooperate with one another to create a more perfect state, then let it be. It is entirely appropriate for Québec to lead this effort against the Harper dictatorship, and this is only further demonstrated by the immediate support of Ontario and BC. In a land ripe in paradox, contrasts and societal and political absurdities, it was very refreshing indeed to see the eccentricities of our system providing the people with direct and effective means to redirect our nation back onto the road towards peace, prosperity and progressivism.

Cultural commentary, Political commentary, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist, Video

Why do we tolerate this?

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More video from the Occupy Wall Street mass-demonstration of civil disobedience on November 17th 2011.

In five days I will walk across a stage, my loving parents looking on, at Salle Wilfred-Pelletier, and collect a receipt for one education. What it cost me is time and money I never had. Where it will lead me I have no idea. The only thing I now know with absolute certainty is that authority is an imposed self-delusion that works both ways, our elites have been viciously sodomizing the Planet and the People almost non-stop since the end of the Second World War, and much like my favourite David Bowie record, our society is stuck in a rut we can’t get out of, skipping in place.

We keep making the same mistakes, the same lethal, inhuman and fundamentally flawed, idiotic mistakes. Mistakes regarding the environment, social and foreign policy, our economy, our infrastructure – the list is nearly endless, and what’s pathetic is that the most attention is paid to those who preach in double-speak and have convinced us of the quality of pseudo-intellectual criticality. They made it seem fun to doubt and question experts, and so, within a decade, we turned our backs on intellectual authority while signing away our freedom to those intent on using corporeal authority against those they were sworn to protect. And so here we are, weak, disorganized, incapable of seeing beyond our individual needs. A ‘society’ of John Galts is no society at all. Our innate focus on self-interest and self-preservation is so severe a mass of angry people can’t overpower police in riot gear. And it has been reinforced by subtle propaganda and infotainment for generations – we are nearly powerless to escape it. By the grace of the gods, however, everyone has a breaking point. If the slave-warriors of the corporate kleptocracy are given carte-blanche to continue using excessive force against peaceful citizens exercising their constitutional rights – whether in New York, Montréal, Shanghai or Durban – all it takes is a single galvanizing act, image, injustice. A burning man, a woman struck down, humiliated, veterans shot in the back – whatever it is, it will happen and it will shock us out of submission. All I can do is hope that such a shock is still possible.

With every passing day I see more criminals masquerading as protectors of our society. Our society, or whatever’s left of it, doesn’t seem worth a damn anymore. Maybe we still have a culture or set of values worth fighting for, something we can all relate to and is found buried deep inside all of us, buried in a mass subconscious we don’t understand. But for the moment we exist in a state of mass paralysis.

If the people of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria can stand up to their oppressors, fight them, and win, why can’t we?

Yesterday thousands of Kuwaitis stormed their parliament.

And we offer ourselves like sheep to a slaughter, waiting for the baton to drop.

I can’t tell if it’s immensely brave or profoundly foolish.

My education can’t tell me that, for what it’s worth.

As of the time this article was published at 17h46 EST, an estimated five-thousand people had occupied Foley Square by the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

Stay strong.