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Is the writing on the wall? Rick certainly seems to think so.
Chris Hedges occasionally has some good ideas when it comes to the American body politic. Consider what we are seeing on the news, and is it really that far off from what is being stated here?
“As Arendt noted, the fascist and communist movements in Europe in the 1930s “… recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who had never before appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been ‘spoiled’ by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the control of reason. This would have been a shortcoming only if they had sincerely entered into competition with either parties; it was not if they were sure of dealing with people who had reason to be equally hostile to all parties.”
Fascism is aided and advanced by the apathy of those who are tired of being conned and lied to by a bankrupt liberal establishment, whose only reason to vote for a politician or support a political party is to elect the least worst. This, for many voters, is the best Clinton can offer.
Fascism expresses itself in familiar and comforting national and religious symbols, which is why it comes in various varieties and forms. Italian fascism, which looked back to the glory of the Roman Empire, for example, never shared the Nazis’ love of Teutonic and Nordic myths. American fascism too will reach back to traditional patriotic symbols, narratives and beliefs.”
[…]
“There is only one way left to blunt the yearning for fascism coalescing around Trump. It is to build, as fast as possible, movements or parties that declare war on corporate power, engage in sustained acts of civil disobedience and seek to reintegrate the disenfranchised—the “losers”—back into the economy and political life of the country. This movement will never come out of the Democratic Party. If Clinton prevails in the general election Trump may disappear, but the fascist sentiments will expand. Another Trump, perhaps more vile, will be vomited up from the bowels of the decayed political system. We are fighting for our political life. Tremendous damage has been done by corporate power and the college-educated elites to our capitalist democracy. The longer the elites, who oversaw this disemboweling of the country on behalf of corporations—who believe, as does CBS Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves, that however bad Trump would be for America he would at least be good for corporate profit—remain in charge, the worse it is going to get.”
It would seem that the revival of class consciousness is going to play a large role in saving democracy in the United States. Remembering class interests and organizing to protect them may be a way to bring people back into the political fold.
Canadian society, especially the justice system, just isn’t ready to hear women when they speak the truth…
This is an amazing post detailing all the conditioning, socialization, and patriarchal f*ckery that women have to fight through, just to be heard.
There’s a question people keep asking about the Ghomeshi trial, and I was up most of last night trying to think of how to answer it. I finally shut my brain off by picturing, in as much detail as possible, a solid wall of packed dirt in the dark above me. I spent the rest of the night mentally attacking my invisible wall. When I finally went to sleep it was what I dreamed about.
Between pretend punches, the words crept in.
Why
punch
did
punch
they
punch
lie?
If they were telling the truth about the assaults, why did they lie about other things? Why didn’t they just tell the truth?
“Manipulative”
punch
“Deceptive”
punch
Why?
I’d like to try to answer that question for you because I’m in an oddly perfect position to do so.
As the verdict of the Ghomeshi case came out, I…
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“A generation ago, a post-modern cult now known as “identity politics” stopped many intelligent, liberal-minded people examining the causes and individuals they supported — such as the fakery of Obama and Clinton; such as bogus progressive movements like Syriza in Greece, which betrayed the people of that country and allied with their enemies.
Self absorption, a kind of “me-ism”, became the new zeitgeist in privileged western societies and signaled the demise of great collective movements against war, social injustice, inequality, racism and sexism.”
-John Pilger. A World War has Begun:Break the Silence
In the business lexicon I think polite somehow equals naive or stupid. Neil Macdonald examines some of the hi-jinks our corporate leadership in Canada feels it can get away with.
“A letter arrived last week from TD Bank. “In order to continue to meet your banking needs …” it began.
Try to guess what came next. Hint: I’m a customer at a Canadian bank.
Sure enough, “We sometimes need to adjust our pricing.”
Unsurprisingly, the prices being adjusted were not being adjusted downward.
As of March, the bank’s “non-TD ATM fee” is being raised 33 per cent.
Fees for cancelling an Interac e-transfer and for holding a post-dated cheque at a branch are going from free to $5. And the fee for transferring a tax-free savings account to another bank is going from free to $75.
These are huge increases, far in excess of growth or individual spending power.
Now, it’s important to understand TD’s position. The bank’s profits were $8.02 billion last year, up only slightly from $7.88 billion the year before.”
Our banks do this sorta shit all the time. Hmm..bottom line looking a bit thin? Let’s put the screw to our customers, they’ll smile and say ‘thank-you’.
“It’s worth noting, though, that in the U.S., where TD is now a serious player, with more branches than in Canada, the bank plans to impose no fee increases on customers come March.
“Totally different environment,” a TD spokeswoman told me.
Translation: There’s a lot more competition there, and if TD tried charging the sorts of fees it imposes on the bank’s supine Canadian flock, some other U.S. bank would be in there siphoning off business before you could say “special offer.”
Up here in Canada, TD’s letter advises customers that if they don’t want to accept the fee hikes, they are free to close their accounts, “without cost or penalty.”
Generous, that.”
It is really as simple as that? Because we in Canada don’t allow the wild west capitalism that typifies our good neighbours to the south we have to accept the fact that the fox is in charge of the henhouse?
“It’s all part of being Canadian. The equation is simple: Canadian consumers and workers are protected from certain free-market excesses, but that coddled security comes with a price: oligopolies, in which a few firms dominate, and all the behaviour that flows from that.”
If this is the price we have to pay to be able to weather the financial shit-storms that brew in the US, I might be able to accept that – but I think that the cost benefit analysis is still up for debate.
“If you want a really depressing bit of Canadian reading, go look at the Canadian Competition Bureau’s policy on “price maintenance,” something most of us know as “price-fixing.”
Certain companies, especially in the luxury trade, try to see to it that their products never go on sale. Rolex is one. Canada Goose, the world-famous Canadian parka-maker, is another.
This offends capitalism: in a free market, one of the few responsibilities of government is to monitor and punish efforts to deaden competition”
Looking at you telecoms :/
“In fact, “price maintenance behaviour” was a criminal act in Canada, until Stephen Harper’s Conservatives changed the law in 2009 (though some forms of price-fixing still remain a crime).
The new law reduced price maintenance to a non-criminal offence, and even at that, it now has to be proven that “price maintenance conduct has had, is having or is likely to have an adverse effect on competition in a market.”
In other words, the government has to prove that price fixing results in fixed prices.”
Another gifted poison pill from our beloved former conservative government. It is shit like this that ruins their airs toward being business friendly and being friends of the market and all of the other hooey they exude from their weaselly mouths. They lay down on market policy that hugely distorts the market – and in the end makes Canadians pay more – and then have the audacity to make ‘sad face’ and shrug their shoulders laying the blame on the ‘free market’. Conservative economic policy is made of pure unadulterated rannygazoo from top to bottom.
“After trying to make sense of the gibberish on its website, I asked the Competition Bureau how many times it’s gone after companies for what it calls price maintenance since it issued its new “enforcement guidelines” in 2014.
The answer: None. Zero.
“Nevertheless,” said a spokeswoman in an email, Canadians should rest assured the bureau remains vigilant: “The Competition Bureau will not hesitate to take appropriate action where it believes price maintenance has occurred.”
Okay. Good to know.”
*sigh* – WTG Competition Bureau. :/
Our Canadian media is taking a beating as of late. Neil Macdonald opines:
“Consider Postmedia, the biggest newspaper chain in the country.
It is largely owned by an American hedge fund, which regularly drains the member newspapers’ dwindling profits at a handsome interest rate as their newsrooms are merged and hollowed out to cut costs, and editorial direction is dictated from corporate headquarters.
No one knows where it will end, but end-stage asset stripping is probably a safe bet.”
My very own Edmonton Journal has been gutted in the latest round of cuts to the editorial board. Where do people think ‘news’ comes from? Primary sources – professional journalists – are the ones reporting and writing the stories that provide the grist for the mill for carrion feeders (bloggers like myself and the rest of the internet) possible. We should be very concerned that our eyes and ears to the world are slowly being hacked to death by corporations that prioritize everything but the actual process of Journalism.
“Baron, now executive editor of the Washington Post, acknowledged the economic forces ripping the business to shreds.
It is so on target that I’m going to quote its most salient passage:
“The greatest danger to a vigorous press today,” he begins, “comes from ourselves.
“The press is routinely belittled, badgered, harassed, disparaged, demonized, and subjected to acts of intimidation from all corners — including boycotts, threats of cancellations (or defunding, in the case of public broadcasting) …
“Our independence — simply posing legitimate questions — is seen as an obstacle to what our critics consider a righteous moral, ideological, political, or business agenda.
“In this environment, too many news organizations are holding back, out of fear — fear that we will be saddled with an uncomfortable political label, fear that we will be accused of bias, fear that we will be portrayed as negative, fear that we will lose customers, fear that advertisers will run from us, fear that we will be assailed as anti-this or anti-that, fear that we will offend someone, anyone.
“Fear, in short, that our weakened financial condition will be made weaker because we did something strong and right, because we simply told the truth and told it straight.”
Yeah. The facts of matter might be offensive, but they still are the facts of the matter. We seem to have lost sight of this salient feature in much of society. The problem, of course, is that our press depends on advertising and therefore behest to many sorts of of influences that detracts from the reporting of the facts.
I hope we as a society get back on track and start supporting our journalists and the crucial role they play in society. Being able to comment and critique in a contextually appropriator manner is founded on having access to the facts of any particular situation.
“But the original information, before it is aggregated and re-aggregated a thousand times, has to come from someone with the experience, brains and training to uncover it in the first place.
That is usually the work of credentialed journalism. It’s what Baron did in Boston. The alternative is usually just spin and corporatist fantasy, and let us all hope the latter does not overwhelm the former.”
20110505 – Evi, Alberta, Canada – Crews work to clean up at Rainbow Pipeline’s oil spill, the worst Alberta oil spill in 35 years, dumping 28, 000 barrels of oil into a wetland area at Evi, Alberta which is near Little Buffalo, Alberta, Canada.
Progress in the laying of plans for Canada’s build-your-own-envirnomental-disaster have hit a snag. The people’s land that we want to endanger are saying no way, and no how. Pretty rude considering that one of our more outspoken Premier’s comments ,“Let those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.” Oh Ralph, how we miss those straight talkn’, shoot from hip’in, shod in political clown shoes days of yesteryear (not at all actually).
Now, it seems, Alberta may need the dreaded Easters help in order to get our tar-sands products to market. Strangely enough, they seem to be not acquiescing to our requests. The Mayor of Montreal responds:
“Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced the city’s official opposition to proposed Energy East pipeline project Thursday, saying the potential risks outweigh its possible economic benefits to communities including his. Coderre was joined by mayors from neighbouring cities including Laval and Longueuil that make up the Montreal Metropolitan Community.
“We are against it because it still represents significant environmental threats and too few economic benefits for greater Montreal,” said Coderre on behalf of the MMC.”
I imagine it would have been easier to make a case for the pipeline if much of Eastern Canada had not been forced to look elsewhere in the market for oil, because apparently the Dreaded National Energy Program (western Canada selling oil to Eastern Canada for a fair price) was to risky a venture for the Western Canadian oil capitalists. Fast forward to the present and now we in the west are wondering why these bastards are not helping us out.
This state of affairs does not sit will for the political representative of the business sector in the Alberta Legislature. Cue the stolid Brian Jean to microphone:
“In a statement, Brian Jean, leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Party, called Coderre’s position “disgraceful.”
“While Mr. Coderre dumps a billion litres of raw sewage directly into his waterways and benefits from billions in equalization payments, his opposition to the Energy East pipeline is nothing short of hypocritical,” Jean said.
Jean claimed the project would entail economic benefits of $9.2 billion for Quebec, citing numbers provided by TransCanada.”
Well, your claim is only made much more substantial by using the figures provided by the oil company. We shan’t tarry to long with sources though, because this was just the opening salvo in the great West VS East energy pipeline showdown.
Coderre replies:
“”First of all, you have to allow me a moment to laugh at a guy like Brian Jean, when he says he relies on science. These are probably the same people who think the Flintstones is a documentary. But that’s another story.”
Ouch. But our intrepid Wild Rose Leader fires back..
“I had an opportunity to serve with Mr. Coderre in federal politics for many years, and I’m used to watching him float up and down the gutter,” said Jean, who was a Conservative MP for a decade before entering provincial politics in Alberta.”
Oh Brian, politics is hard and nasty eh? We’ll finish with Mr.Coderre:
“The community of metropolitan Montreal isn’t nothing,” he said. “It’s four million residents, it’s 82 municipalities, it’s 50 per cent of the gross domestic product, population and jobs of Quebec.
“We have committees of engineers, so we are working with credible data. We realized that when you build it, you can say it will bring this or that, and it will create so many jobs. But the economic reality is that it’s only 33 jobs and at most $2 million per year of municipal revenue.”
Two million is far cry from 9.2 billion dollars. I’m sure the real number lies *somewhere* between those two extremes, but that isn’t the point. It is Mr.Coderre that we are trying to win over to our side, and calling him a gutter inhabitant is not going to get the pipeline built. This kind of grandstanding might win you the populist vote from rural Alberta (hurrah for the Sticks!), but it doesn’t play very well on the national stage.
On the upside, Brain Jean and band of merry corporatists are doing a lovely PR job, making the Energy East pipeline much less likely to happen. Perhaps the Suzuki Foundation will give them an award or something.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…