You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2017.
To all of our kind readership – Happy Holidays – to you and may you find comfort with your friends and family this time of year.
Never put your trust in fruitcake. :) Happy Holidays folks.
The United Nations is a marginalized entity, like the League of Nations, it was formed with the idea that humanity, as a species can do better than just sit within our imaginary borders and fling poo (sometimes thermonuclear) at each other.
It’s a noble and nice idea.
And that’s about it.
Any sort of movement toward a more globalized world is always drowned out by the odious strains of nationalism and exceptionalism of the powerful countries of the world.
The summation of Noam Chomskey’s work in international politics is this: “The same rules should apply to everyone.” Strip away the academic writing and the dense prose and you will see him return to this thesis repeatedly. A war crime is a war crime whether it is committed by the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys’ and the judgments and punishments meted out should be the same in both situations. This, of course, would mean that every US president would be charged with war crimes and would be prosecuted thusly – a flight of fantasy in the current geopolitical order – but it would be what a just world would look like.
Possessing the biggest stick should not be an automatic exemption from the rules that everyone else has to follow. Breaking news on this one though – the current bearers of the big stick club resoundingly disagree with me on this point. And thus the big stick carriers rightly get annoyed when marginally global institutions like the UN fail to toe the line on important issues regarding the ‘national interest’ (see imperialism/exceptionism).
“The United Nations general assembly has delivered a stinging rebuke to Donald Trump, voting by a huge majority to reject his unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The vote came after a redoubling of threats by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, who said that Washington would remember which countries “disrespected” America by voting against it.”
Way to go UN! As far as impotent political statements and actions go, you are doing fantastic work.
“Despite the warning, 128 members voted on Thursday in favour of the resolution supporting the longstanding international consensus that the status of Jerusalem – which is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians – can only be settled as an agreed final issue in a peace deal.”
It’s hard to find a more prescient example of US exceptionalism. The constant untrammelled stream of unwavering support for Israel – notwithstanding the incredibly shitty things Israel is doing/has been doing to the Palestinians for decades- by the US merely underlines how irrelevant the UN is to US foreign policy and its associated imperial ventures.
“Twenty-two of the 28 EU countries voted for the resolution, including the UK and France. Germany – which in the past has abstained on measures relating to Israel – also voted in favour.
Thirty-five countries abstained, including five EU states, and other US allies including Australia, Canada, Colombia and Mexico. Ambassadors from several abstaining countries, including Mexico, used their time on the podium to criticise Trump’s unilateral move.
Another 21 delegations were absent from the vote, suggesting the Trump’s warning over funding cuts and Israel’s lobbying may have had some effect.
While support for the resolution was somewhat less than Palestinian officials had hoped, the meagre tally of just nine votes in support of the US and Israeli position was a serious diplomatic blow for Trump.”
Yeaaaaaa Canada – we abstained. Such a bold move for our country, we’re really standing up to the injustice and stupidity being visited upon the world by our neighbours to the South.
*sigh*
I suppose it is the best we can do given our geographical and economic situation. But wouldn’t be nice if we could just denounce this bullshite -rightly on moral an ethical grounds – without always having to defer to the realpolitik of the situation.
I understand about a third of what he’s talking about. Music theory is complicated. :/ A great video though. :)
A little dark and shameful bit of Canada’s history – (from wikipedia)
“The École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was a mass shooting at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that occurred on December 6, 1989. Twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a rifle and a hunting knife, shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before committing suicide. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was “fighting feminism” and calling the women “a bunch of feminists,” he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under 20 minutes before turning the gun on himself. His suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note included a list of 19 Quebec women whom Lépine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history.
Since the attack, Canadians have debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and Lépine’s motives. Many feminist groups and public officials have characterized the massacre as an anti-feminist attack that is representative of wider societal violence against women. Consequently, the anniversary of the massacre has since been commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.”
Yeah. Dude finally makes his rage fantasies real and murders 14 females. The Wilfred Laurier Centre for Women and Trans People makes the crucial argument – But What About The Men?? – instead of recognizing a day of remembrance for what it is – a day against the sex class based violence against women.
When you see the word ‘intersectional’ these days you can almost assume that the paragraph in question will be loaded with bullshit. Transactivists and the associated ‘queer theory’ is fucking in love with redefining words into senseless, male-pandering flap-a-doodle.
Interesectionality (for the nth time) is the study of how overlapping or intersecting social identities, particularly minority identities, relate to systems and structures of oppression, domination, or discrimination.
Intersectionality for many Transactivists is simple a ‘#WATM?’ transcribed into academic speak in order to cloak the misogyny that underpins the transactivist connotation of the word. And of course, as the post below illustrates this insipid bowdlerization of feminist language servers to erase female history and the class based violence that females experience in our society.
http://auntiewanda.tumblr.com/post/168548589581/shopcatsca-auntiewanda-murmormar
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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