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Well we can’t be posting sunshine everyday here at DWR. A small reminder of what the people of our nations are up against. From the essay titled Revolution and American Empire by Rob Urie.
“Liberal economists have ‘fought the good fight’ for nominally populist economic programs for the last decade with little but growing frustration to show for it. In sequence, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama enacted economic policies— deregulation of banks, tax cuts for the very wealthy, the largest bank bailouts in human history and ‘trade’ deals that formalize corporate control over civil governance. There exist economic theories to support each and every one of these policies. Many prominent economists base which economic policies they support or oppose on which political Party is in office at the time they are proposed. The policies enacted are retroactively deemed ‘politically feasible’ in tacit admission that economic outcomes are politically determined. ‘Markets’ are used to explain these outcomes with the politics removed.
From the time of the American Revolution to today, with a brief compromise between 1948 and about 1973, the U.S. has been run by and for a self-serving plutocracy. Slavery and genocide weren’t ‘accidents’ nor were they the product of primitive thinking. U.S. wars in Central America, Southeast Asia and Iraq were / are as primitive, in the sense of being for-profit and brutal, as any in human history. And it is hardly an accident that elite impunity and immunity from prosecution for crimes, including War Crimes, is matched by brutal repression of the economic underclasses. Banks and corporations are the social forms of economic imperialism, necessary to the imperial project that places the rest of us as imperial subjects. Back to the start: the American Revolution was fought for the freedom to repress while the revolutions of liberation it has opposed were / are by-and-large fought against it.
The obligatory liberal chides against Russian and Cuban totalitarianism, in their contemporary incarnations against ‘strongman’ Vladimir Putin and the aging Fidel Castro, never admit to two centuries of American crimes or to never ending U.S. attempts to undermine democratic revolutions around the globe. This isn’t to gloss over crimes— the U.S. is the only nation in history to drop atom bombs on largely civilian populations, U.S. General Curtis LeMay joked that had the U.S. lost WWII he would have hung for the bombing of Tokyo, three million killed in the Korean War, three million killed in Vietnam, one million killed in Iraq and substantial portions of Central America turned into right-wing gangster states. Cuba is poor today because the U.S. has enforced an economic blockade of it for half a century. And the only guarantee from ‘liberalized’ relations between the U.S. and Cuba is that Cuba will get the worst of it.”
[Source:Counterpunch]
Rachel Notley being sworn into office.
The CBC does such a remarkable job for a mere pittance per Canadian. We need to up the ante and properly fund the CBC at least to the average amount, $82 dollars. Imagine no commercials on CBC Radio 2 and a sharp curtailing of the ‘adult contemporary’ drivel and a return to the classical haven Radio 2 once was. Oooo…warm and snuggly feelings all over in DWR land. :)
Time to properly fund the CBC.
Some beliefs are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. – Sam Harris.
This is a dangerous quote from Mr.Harris because it muddles the line between action and intent. How can there be any sort of dialogue when one faction can be singled out for death for nothing that they have done, but their beliefs.
Consider how easy it would be for opponents of US policy to follow this same doctrine – would they too be taking ethical action?
Harris, in this context, is not adding clarity to the complex problem of the interaction of secular and religious ideals.
Funny Juxtaposition of our Fossil Fuel Premier in front of a Nature themed backdrop.
I love Alberta! Where else can you see bought politicians spew unvarnished truth about who is important in Alberta and who isn’t. I skip ahead of myself though, allow me to backtrack a bit.
Reading this article from the CBC stoked up the cranky cynic in me. I wish that our politicians would make their allegiances to power less obvious.
“Alberta Premier Jim Prentice says the province has forgotten some key points about the sustainability of the energy industry and is vowing to work towards building as many pipelines as possible.
In a speech to the Economic Club’s Canadian Energy Summit in Calgary on Friday, Prentice said the province needs to remember that hydrocarbons are only valuable when there are competing customers — and if there are multiple ways to ship the resource.”
And here I was hoping Jimbo would mention the unsustainability of the current energy model. Germany has been working their collective fingers to the bone establishing renewable energy sources to power their country. Up here in Texas North we’re just discovering the fucking laws of supply and demand. You would think that putting all our eggs in the fossil fuel basket would be a bad strategy – even your local bank toady recommends diversifying – but hells no. It’s Oilday everyday in Alberta-land.
“Prentice said his goal is to see pipelines built in every possible direction. He wants to work with Ontario and Quebec in the coming weeks to get those provinces on board with his push to get Alberta oil to market.”
Ah yes, because doubling (tripling?) down on a doomed strategy is completely the way to go. Also, we need to kill more Nature so the right people can make profit.
“He also restated his commitment to see Alberta become an environmental leader.”
My my my… us plebs should be falling all over Jimbo’s dedicated to environmental stewardship. Just don’t look at the huge contradiction in the room: rapaciously exploiting natural energy resources versus preserving the ecosystem are mutually exclusive concepts.
In the crazy fun house world of imperial politics nationalist regimes are less preferable than radical religious ones. Noam Chomsky and Andre Vltchek discuss the motivations of empire in the Middle East in this selection from the book: On Western Terrorism – From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare.
“Noam Chomsky:
“Anyhow, going back to the Middle East after World War II. The British role in Iran was reduced and the US began to take over. IN Iraq in 1958, there was a so-called independent government, but it was basically British-run, and it was overthrown in a military coup. A couple of years later the US was able to engineer a coup that overthrew the Nasser-type nationalist government, and that’s where Saddam Hussein comes in. The CIA handed the new Ba’athist government a long list of Communists, radicals, and teachers, and then they all got assassinated. Then you come to the present; the US expects to run Iraq. In Saudi Arabia, the British were the junior partner, Finally the British pulled out, and left it to the United States.”
Andre Vltchek:
Of course Saudi Arabia is a tremendously destabilizing force in the world and its influence spreads from Bahrain to Indonesia. In Bahrain there is the fear that the country may be annexed by Saudi Arabia, The Saudi Army is and out of Bahrain.
Noam Chomsky:
The Saudis are pouring money all over the place to sponsor the most extreme forms of radical Islam – Wahabbism – in Madrasas, in Pakistan, pouring money into Egypt to support the Salafis, all extreme Islamic elements. The United States is happy with that; it doesn’t try to prevent them.
The idea that the US is opposed to radical Islam is ludicrous. The most extreme fundamentalist Islamic state in the world is Saudi Arabia, which is the US’s favourite. Britain also has consistently supported radical Islam. The reason was to oppose secular nationalism. US relations with Israel reached their current close state in 1967 because Israel performed the huge service of smashing secular nationalism and defending radical Islam.
A British diplomatic historian, Mark Curtis, wrote a very good book a few years ago called Secret Affairs: British Collusion with Radical Islam (review here). Curtis went through the British records on Islam. It turns out the British had consistently supported radical Islamist elements, pretty much was the US has been doing. They may not have liked it, but they prefer them to the secular nationalists.
Secular nationalists threatened them – they threatened to take over the resources and use them for domestic development and that’s the worst sin; so we support radical Islamists.”
-Excerpt from “On Western Terrorism from Hiroshima to Drone Warfare p.115 – 116
It would seem that Geo-political decisions are quietly being adjudicated by the imperial powers of the world. It would also seem that they are quite separate from the political fodder being offered to their respective populations.
A big thank you to Neural Notes for posting this video to recent discussion thread over at the Superstitious Naked Ape. It is a grand example of establishment vs revolutionary representatives talking past each other.
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