Tag Archives: Politics

Brain Drain

Pierre-Karl Péladeau during a press scrum - credit to Toronto Star
Pierre-Karl Péladeau during a press scrum – credit to Toronto Star

Today was just one of those days I suppose. Perhaps you’ve had them too. A day were you read the paper and see the headlines and wonder just what it is you’re doing living in Montreal. Today wasn’t even particularly cold out either.

Rather, it was the enlightened goons who (somehow) managed to get elected to represent the collective interests of Quebec, with an apparent total disregard for the interests of many of its citizens, particularly those noble enough to stick it out in what’s increasingly starting to look like a city on the verge of real failure.

And I’ve been accused of being an apologist, not only for Montreal but Quebec as well.

In case this has all been too glib allow me to get straight to the point.

In an era of heightened awareness concerning campus sexual assault, the education minister has given his own ringing endorsement to fully legal strip searches of minors without parental consent or even police involvement, so long as it’s done in a ‘respectful’ manner. If you’ve just spewed coffee out onto your laptop reading that last sentence take a moment because there’s more. The strip searches are justified in terms of the student’s security, just like every invasion of the state into the personal domain. Always for our own interests, legally speaking. The reason this is news is because a fifteen year old girl was strip searched by her principle and another woman who worked at her Quebec City high school. They were looking for pot. They found nothing. The girl was coerced into removing all of her clothing without legal representation, without the involvement of police, an without notifying her parents.

She complained to a newspaper she felt violated. No kidding. This is Quebec in 2015 and it makes my blood boil.

Especially because you’d figure Yves Bolduc would have the common sense to realize he’s opened the door to so much potential abuse of minors in Quebec schools. Did he learn nothing from the Residential Schools Scandal?

And that’s just for starters.

Then the enlightened (pure sarcasm) head of the poorly named CAQ decided to let us all know he thinks every mosque in Quebec should be investigated so as to determine whether or not the imam/congregation preaches values that are in line with Quebec values.

What Quebec values?

The discrimination of ethnic and religious minorities? Undue persecution? Are those the values of which he speaks?

François Legault co-founded Air Transat. He was an education minister during the Landry Administration. He is an accomplished individual by any standard. Yet in Quebec he can afford to make statements such as these and be taken seriously, statements that would void whatever political credentials one might have in just about any other political jurisdiction. A career-limiting move, in corporate parlance.

Not here. In Quebec saying ‘every Muslim is guilty until proven innocent’ is just fine for the leader of a provincial political party. The only other political party in all of Canada that came close to this type of nonsense was the wildrose Party in Alberta and they imploded under the weight of their own ineptitude. Is it any wonder some Muslims living in Quebec (and by that I mean Montreal, let’s be real) don’t feel welcome and may actually get pushed towards embracing the more conservative if not fundamentalist aspects of their faith? They come here expecting liberty and tolerance and discover they’ve immigrated to the part of Canada that still hasn’t accepted Canadian values as defined in our constitution and charter.

Quebec is governed by a collective siege mentality that has ruined our economy and has entrenched social, cultural, political and economic divides across the province (all of which intersect as if at a bull’s eye squarely atop Montreal).

And then, rounding out the shameful day that was February 18th 2015 in Quebec, the heir-presumptive to the throne of the Parti Québécois, Pierre-Karl Péladeau, said that a referendum would not be necessary to achieve independence, and that a PQ electoral victory would be sufficient. A few hours later his aide would insist that this was not the case, that he misunderstood the question.

Independence. Nothing’s working and we’re still talking independence.

Some days I hate living here. Some days I hate living in the place I have always called home.

I don’t know why I’m able to somehow force myself not to be bothered by it on some days, while on others it forces me into the pits of despair. I also don’t know why I put up with it. Everyone I know tells me to leave or tells me that’s what they’ll tell their children; that there are no opportunities here, and that it’s foolish and naive to think things will change for the better.

I know too many people who made the right choice and left.

How awful it is to live in a city as tantalizing and generally enjoyable as Montreal, only to be made ultimately untenable by poisonous and petty provincial politics.

Tuesday November 15th – The Pigs Move In

Watch live streaming video from occupynyc at livestream.com

An absolutely despicable, cowardly act by the NYPD – happening now (as of 2:00 am EST).

So over the course of the past sixteen hours the NYPD raided Zucotti Park, prevented media from entering the site, used police helicopters to enforce a ‘no-fly-zone’ over the area (which in turn prevented CBS and NBC news choppers from entering the airspace). The police dismantled the encampment, threw out a bunch of stuff, burned thousands of books. Two month’s worth of work was destroyed by the NYPD and City of New York agencies. Among others, a city councillor, reporters and veterans roughed-up, beaten, arrested. Justice Lucy Billings approved the re-occupation of Zuccotti Park, and then (just minutes ago) it was struck down. If this is what a democracy looks like, democracy isn’t worth a god damn. There’s a protest going on right now at the American Consulate in Montréal. Gloves are coming off.

It’s absolutely sickening to watch – a peaceful public demonstration is being destroyed by people who are paid via taxation. Civil servants being used to suppress the People. How perverted, how fucked.

The Enemy Within II: A Waco/End-Game Scenario

This article was originally posted to the Forget the Box news collective on the 31st of July.

I’ve been fascinated by the Siege at Waco and the Branch Davidians since I was an eight-year old and I watched the tragic events unfold nearly-live on CNN in 1993. Admittedly, I was not entirely aware of the grave implications of the raid, stand-off and siege back then as I am today, and Waco, in my eyes, is a catastrophe so epic it deserves to stay fresh in the minds of any concerned citizen living in a modern democratic nation. I think it would be too glib to call it an isolated event, and even if the threat from doomsday cults is generally a bit of a rarity, the lessons from the Waco Siege have broad implications, especially with regards to the responsibilities of modern media and the potential for State intervention therein.

At the end of the day you need to ask yourself the following question:

Can media and information be left in the hands of profit-driven corporations? The United Nations recently decreed that full free access to the Internet is a fundamental human right. And good timing too – the Obama Administration has been using free access to the Internet as a key tool for advancing the democratic agenda in countless Middle Eastern nations yearning to break free from oppressive and tyrannical dictatorships (apparently, the American government may have played a role in ensuring that social-networking and Internet access remained somewhat open during the Egyptian Revolution, despite Egyptian efforts to prevent this). Now, we’re also quite aware that the Americans, much like our own impudent thug of a federal government, have also been using the Internet, social-networking tools etc. against its own people and have also been waging a losing battle against Anonymous, Lulzsec and other revolutionary hacker collectives. Despite these half-hearted attempts at censorship, it seems to suggest that the world of privatized and corporate information may very well be on the way out, because democratized, free and reliable information is proving to be the new source of reliability for the youth of the First World. Very simply put – there is a large and growing segment of the population here in Canada, the US and various other nations across the globe that is no longer paying attention to corporate media because they have proven themselves unreliable. This same segment seems to value information free from corporate/political spin and private ownership, and I would hope that one day, as a result of this growing change in popular opinion, government will mandate that media and information can no longer be bought and sold, that humanity has a right to free, correct information, and that profit-driven journalism is anathema to the proper functioning of a liberal State.

Profit-driven, politically motivated media can be a killer, but we’re so used to having large corporations responsible for providing us with basic though vital information that we haven’t had much of an opportunity to consider what our options are. And if we have options today, they are options that essentially didn’t exist a mere eighteen years ago.

In 1993 a newly formed US government agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (attached to the Treasury Department and responsible for prosecuting in-country smuggling and stockpiling of the aforementioned controlled items) attempted to execute a search of the Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas. The Davidians were a non-mainstream splinter group loosely associated with the Seventh Day Adventist movement who took the Bible as the literal word of God. Their leader was a charismatic thirty-four year old Apocalyptic named David Koresh. Using the Books of Revelation and Isaiah as his guide, he instructed his congregation on the nature and identity of the Seven Seals, the seven signs leading to Judgement Day. This is not overly unique – there have been apocalypse/judgement day cults since the early days of the messianic religions. What made the Davidians a problem was their apparently massive collection of weapons and ammunition, not to mention the degree of self-sufficiency they had attained at their large agricultural compound. And so, the ATF was called upon to execute a search of the compound and to take any illegal weapons and ammunition found there, possibly also arresting any key members of the organization (the Davidians regularly sold guns at gun shows and ran their own catalogue as a means to support themselves – it was widely believed that the Davidians had illegally modified rifles to fire on full automatic, and that these weapons may be used by anti-government militias, or that the Davidians themselves were a potential threat to government, local or federal). Much like we saw in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected, Bill Clinton’s election also saw a sudden rise in Far-Right organizations and anti-government militias. A few years prior to the Siege at Waco, the ATF and FBI attempted to serve a warrant at the Ruby Ridge compound of Randy Weaver, a white supremacist. The result was a shoot-out leaving one federal agent dead as well as Weaver’s wife and son. The ATF was ‘attempting a comeback’ from the disastrous events at Ruby Ridge, and had spent a considerable amount of time and effort establishing a strong local media presence. As it happened, Koresh was identified as a possible serial sexual-abuser and pederast in an article entitled ‘Sinful Messiah’ by the local Waco newspaper about a week before the attempted search. Local media coverage was intense, and Koresh, an apocalyptic who believed in the ultimate showdown between good and evil to be the ultimate climax of his existence, was now very directly threatened by exactly the forces he and his people wanted nothing to do with – mass media and big government.

When it came time to execute the search, the ATF was unaware that the Davidians had a) been tipped-off to the coming ‘raid’ by none other than Koresh’s brother-in-law (who himself had been inadvertently warned by a reporter) and b) had been preparing for a direct attack on their compound as a precursor to Armageddon, in which they would be fighting Evil incarnate. Mere minutes before the ATF arrived at the Mount Carmel compound, FBI mole Richard Rodriguez was outed by Koresh in front of his congregation and told to leave so as not to be killed. Rodriguez, with his insider perspective warned the ATF against attempting to enter the compound, sensing the bloodbath that was about to ensue.

What happened next is history. About 80 Davidians and four ATF agents were killed in the raid, standoff and siege. Timothy McVeigh would bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City two years later as a revenge attack. And the anti-government, Christian Identity extremist movement was provided a further sense of justification, not to mention martyrs. Events like Waco, Oklahoma City, Utoya and the myriad of other recent Far-Right terrorist attacks have a common denominator – profit-driven corporate media acting irresponsibly. And this will continue to be the common denominator – a slick, sick machine that manipulates people to commit acts of extreme violence and then viciously attacks those who would dare call them out for their transgressions. Look at the Fox News apologists who claim innocence and over focus on the killer’s purported Christianity to buy themselves a way out of dealing with the real issues. Look at the puppets that deny the merits of gun control for kickbacks from the NRA. Consider the ad revenue generated by comparing the teenage victims of a massacre to Nazis.

This is a machine worth raging against.

The Broken Republic – A Reflection on the Death of Reason

I was raised on TV,
Like so many of you I see around me.
Nothing to live or die for,
No religion too…
Here…?
Now…?
Why…!?!

Gord Downie

The United States is broken.

It’s broke too.

And reason has taken a holiday.

When the most rational people a State can produce spend an inordinate amount of time arguing trivialities and tangents with reactionary fools, the political system is hopelessly broken.

And, seeing as hindsight is always 20-20, we can see the view from 2011 looks bleak. Facing backwards we see a dim light far off in the distance, bittersweet memories of simpler times in back in the mid-1990s. We’re fooling ourselves though – despite our nostalgia the view behind us is bleak past Bush the First, and the kindly old men and women we knew as ‘Leaders of the Free World’ back in our youth were criminals, war-mongers and masters of manipulation – setting the tone more than thirty years ago. Reagan may have looked good to a child watching CNN when the Soviet Union was dying, but his historical record speaks for itself – the man very nearly caused the Third World War, and his economic and social agenda triggered a major destabilization of the American middle-class, and an all-out war against the poor and labouring class in its own right. Many of the problems President Obama is trying to deal with today with have roots stretching all the way back to the heady days of the early and mid-1980s. And a good number of the crackpot lunatics running the RNC and GOP today know Reagan, through their own self-imposed myopia and outright arrogant ignorance, as perhaps the greatest modern American president. He has been idolized and made both Alpha and Omega in an ungodly union of so-called fiscal Conservatives, moralist-libertarians and corporate-evangelical Christians – all the major Conservative pundits praise his name and record as if it was unblemished. I say they’ve damn near made a false idol of this Reagan, and though I’m no Christian, I really wish they’d follow their own god-dammed commandments once in a while.

And reason? Gone. Poof! It disappeared because the People of the First World weren’t paying attention to what really mattered. They voted in governments that took money out of schools, hospitals and social services, and invested heavily in building new weapons to continue fighting wars (this despite the fact that by the late-1980s, it was clear the Cold War was over). They decided to simply equate being a Conservative with knowing something about how economics work. And our disinterest in really knowing whether or not our leaders knew what the hell they were talking about was recognized by the media, who realized in turn that the only thing that drives news coverage is scandal, bickering and punditry. Information wasn’t coming in quickly enough for the cable news outlets, so they had to start making news up – inventing a story to drive up ad revenue. And before we knew it our disinterest in actively participating in the democratic process had produced a new corporate policy for the Media Giants: if it’s not infotainment, it’s not news.

Therefore, out go the boring in-depth analyses of social and economic policy, and in come the actors. Starting with Reagan, the original b-movie actor turned politician, our political reality was radically transformed for the worse. The New Right united the RNC/GOP establishment with a massive voter base of special interest groups and special-ed students; those who could use the newly sensationalistic corporate media to press their agenda and distract from government economic planning, and those too stupid to care about government economic planning, but who want you to know that Jesus wants ‘Mer-ri-ca to kill the Ayatollah because of 9-11, and Obama is a secret al-Qaeda operative.

It’s bullshit – we are living in the Golden Age of Bullshit. No Gilded Age mind you – not even an attempt to hide the rotting soul within – it’s out there for all to see. Bullshit is currency now, and an unfortunately large number of people buy it. They buy into Goldline. They fall for Nigerian Prince Schemes. They don’t care that about healthcare – those obnoxious camera-whores from New Jersey are fighting each other again! What fun!

And don’t kid yourselves, we’re all partially responsible for this mess, or at the very least have been significantly conditioned whether we like it or not – the commercialization of information, media and facts has left an indelible stain on our collective society. So many of us are the exploited, the misguided mass that votes Republican, or Conservative or doesn’t vote at all. And we have been mislead by the exploitation of our general preference to be passively entertained rather than to actively participate in our society. As a result, the once progressive but now decadent West seems to be very quickly losing one of its core societies, as the American Civilization crumbles with the weight of its own accumulated inertia. If we’re not next to fall, perhaps there is a legitimate strength to the Canadian culture after all – and wouldn’t it be wise to get to know what specifically has minimized the impact of this kind of blatant exploitation of the People’s will. To be fooled by those who can afford to do so ad infinitum for their own selfish gain is one thing, but to have a significant amount of what constitutes your initial worldview so expertly tainted you need to dig yourself out of an ignorance pit just to realize what reason means is a horrifying imposed intellectual handicap. We’re not just being mislead, we’re being actively dumbed-down.

A few nights ago, trying to deal with my own angst-fuelled insomnia, I began reading the preferred copy of Plato’s Republic used by my Alma Matter, Concordia’s Liberal Arts College. Doing as I had been so trained, I picked it up and started on page one – no skipping to the Parable of the Cave for me. I was astounded at how expertly the editor’s introduction framed the contents of the Republic as an intellectual reaction to the decline of the once-great Athenian State. Undone by a seemingly endless war and a resurgent paganism that the state used to its own advantage, Athens slipped from an enlightened state to one of barbarity, avarice, corruption and a total disinclination towards what an individual can teach himself. Socrates was murdered because he was an atheist, and refused to believe that man was incapable of thinking and doing for himself and for others. After the fall of Athens, those who led did so by venerating the once-forgotten Gods, and reminded the people that they themselves were not responsible for their actions. ‘Tis only the will of the Gods you know…
And where are we now?

Back to basics, and not much further along than back when Socrates gave his version of The Last Lecture. We exist in a fearful, crumbling collection of dying societies, expert at carving out differences and distinctions between men whilst simultaneously encouraging the notion that we are all equally helpless. A society that has turned its back on our individual free-will and ability to think for ourselves – a dangerous situation for the Elites of Plato’s day inasmuch as it is a danger to the ruling classes that keep modern man in a brand-new cave. What war will save us now? What revolution of mind, body and soul will free us from our bondage?

Haven’t we been down this road before?

You’d think we’d have learned something by now…

A Class Divided – A Truly Exceptional Frontline Documentary

Ok, so for whatever reason, PBS’ embed code doesn’t seem to be working, so I’ll try to get an actual video link for this article in a few days. Until then, you can scope out the Frontline doc A Class Divided here.

I share the opinion of the teacher who created this experiment – hopefully, one day it will be a thoroughly useless experiment, as the dangers of discrimination are understood as a fundamental evil in our society. Until that day, I would hope that every parent and teacher out there watches this and uses it to rid our world of this unimaginable evil.

As I said to my 8th great physical sciences teacher, a bit of a cranky old guy from St. Lucia, way back in the day – our blood is the same colour. All of humanity’s differences are merely skin deep, and we are but one people living on a small planet hurtling through space at the edge of our galaxy.

There may be as many as 500 million potentially habitable planets – another 500 million Earths, within our galaxy alone.

If we don’t figure out how to live together soon, we have no hope of ever establishing contact with those who assuredly live beyond the Sun. This is an evolutionary step, and we cannot afford to miss it.

Enjoy.

Prescient – Or why nothing’s changed in 30 years

These are the lyrics to Gil Scott-Heron’s “B-Movie”, written in 1981.

Above is the full version of the song, the lyrics below correspond to it entirely. Follow along, and I implore you to Google or Wikipedia anything you may not immediately recognize. Gil’s dissection of American politics in 1981 still holds a lot of weight, and given the retarded nature of American politics at this point here, half-way through 2011, I don’t think much has changed. It’s also an excellent American history lesson, packaged with funk. What’s not to enjoy?

We’re living in a B-movie…

***

Well, the first thing I want to say is…”Mandate my ass!”
Because it seems as though we’ve been convinced that 26% of the registered voters, not even 26% of the American people, but 26% of the registered voters form a mandate – or a landslide. 21% voted for Skippy and 3, 4% voted for somebody else who might have been running.

But, oh yeah, I remember. In this year that we have now declared the year from Shogun to Reagan, I remember what I said about Reagan…meant it. Acted like an actor…Hollyweird. Acted like a liberal. Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California, then he acted like a Republican. Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for president. And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We’re all actors in this I suppose.

What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer. And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune…the consumer has got to dance. That’s the way it is. We used to be a producer – very inflexible at that, and now we are consumers and, finding it difficult to understand. Natural resources and minerals will change your world. The Arabs used to be in the 3rd World. They have bought the 2nd World and put a firm down payment on the 1st one. Controlling your resources will control your world. This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now. They don’t know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan. They don’t know if they want to be diplomats or continue the same policy – of nuclear nightmare diplomacy. John Foster Dulles ain’t nothing but the name of an airport now.

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can – even if it’s only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse – or the man who always came to save America at the last moment – someone always came to save America at the last moment – especially in “B” movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan – and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at – like a “B” movie.

Come with us back to those inglorious days when heroes weren’t zeros. Before fair was square. When the cavalry came straight away and all-American men were like Hemingway to the days of the wondrous “B” movie. The producer underwritten by all the millionaires necessary will be Casper “The Defensive” Weinberger – no more animated choice is available. The director will be Attila the Haig, running around frantically declaring himself in control and in charge. The ultimate realization of the inmates taking over at the asylum. The screenplay will be adapted from the book called “Voodoo Economics” by George “Papa Doc” Bush. Music by the “Village People” the very military “Macho Man.”

“Company!!!”
“Macho, macho man!”
“Two-three-four.”
“He likes to be – well, you get the point.”
“Huuut! Your left! Your left! Your left…right, left, right, left, right…!”

A theme song for saber-rallying and selling wars door-to-door. Remember, we’re looking for the closest thing we can find to John Wayne. Clichés abound like kangaroos – courtesy of some spaced out Marlin Perkins, a Reagan contemporary. Clichés like, “itchy trigger finger” and “tall in the saddle” and “riding off or on into the sunset.” Clichés like, “Get off of my planet by sundown!” More so than clichés like, “he died with his boots on.” Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap steak tough. And Bonzo’s substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece – a miracle – a cotton-candy politician…Presto! Macho!

“Macho, macho man!”

Put your orders in America. And quick as Kodak your leaders duplicate with the accent being on the dupe – cause all of a sudden we have fallen prey to selective amnesia – remembering what we want to remember and forgetting what we choose to forget. All of a sudden, the man who called for a blood bath on our college campuses is supposed to be Dudley “God-damn” Do-Right?

“You go give them liberals hell Ronnie!”

That was the mandate. To the new “Captain Bligh” on the new ship of fools. It was doubtlessly based on his chameleon performance of the past – as a liberal democrat – as the head of the Studio Actor’s Guild. When other celluloid saviors were cringing in terror from McCarthy – Ron stood tall. It goes all the way back from Hollywood to hillbilly. From liberal to libelous, from “Bonzo” to Birch idol…born again. Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights…it’s all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn it…first one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.

Nostalgia, that’s what we want…the good ol’ days…when we gave ’em hell. When the buck stopped somewhere and you could still buy something with it. To a time when movies were in black and white – and so was everything else. Even if we go back to the campaign trail, before six-gun Ron shot off his face and developed hoof-in-mouth. Before the free press went down before full-court press. And were reluctant to review the menu because they knew the only thing available was – Crow.

Lon Chaney, our man of a thousand faces – no match for Ron. Doug Henning does the make-up – special effects from Grecian Formula 16 and Crazy Glue. Transportation furnished by the David Rockefeller Remote Control Company. Their slogan is, “Why wait for 1984? You can panic now…and avoid the rush.”

So much for the good news…

As Wall Street goes, so goes the nation. And here’s a look at the closing numbers – racism’s up, human rights are down, peace is shaky, war items are hot – the House claims all ties. Jobs are down, money is scarce – and common sense is at an all-time low with heavy trading. Movies were looking better than ever and now no one is looking because, we’re starring in a “B” movie. And we would rather have John Wayne…we would rather have John Wayne.

“You don’t need to be in no hurry.
You ain’t never really got to worry.
And you don’t need to check on how you feel.
Just keep repeating that none of this is real.
And if you’re sensing, that something’s wrong,
Well just remember, that it won’t be too long
Before the director cuts the scene…yea.”

“This ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really ain’t nothing but a movie.”

[Refrain repeated about 25 times or more in an apocalyptic crescendo with a military cadence.]

“This ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really your life,
Ain’t really ain’t nothing but a movie.”