Priorities on crime - Harper Style

Here's an interesting overview of what our esteemed Prime Minister is pulling with his 'crime' bill that is now being forced onto Canadians, sans meaningful debate (as is his style):

http://www.care2.com/causes/potheads-fare-worse-than-child-rapists-in-canadian-crime-bill.html

Why don't the Conservatives just change their name to the Frightened Little Boys Club?

Hubris at work

Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, had this interesting thought regarding the situation unfolding in Libya:

"The “responsibility to protect” doctrine, the banner unfolded as we went into the Libyan battle, represents the complete descent of the ruling elites of the West into madness. If insanity requires a certain unselfconsciousness, an inability as well as an unwillingness to see one’s actions objectively, then surely this describes the Western mindset as we hail Libya’s chaotic “liberation.” To look at what is happening in that country and declare it a “success” – or, indeed, anything other than a catastrophe – is clear evidence of mental disability. The blinding madness of our ruling elites has them lurching from one disaster to the next, and proclaiming it a great success – without any awareness of how close the whole imperialist project is to collapse."

Canadian politician and self-proclaimed foreign policy guru Lloyd Axworthy was very much involved with the development of the 'responsibility to protect' doctrine. It's interesting to see how well that concept is working when applied in the real non-western world.

Maybe we should demand that our governments stay home and just let those who feel the need to intervene in other people's business to do so with all their own resources, rather than allowing them to usurp taxpayer's moneys to pursue their dreams of glory in foreign lands.

Cynical old me, however, thinks that all of these disasters are driven by the corporate kleptocracy that is looking to steal the resources of places such as Iraq, Libya etc. These guys always manage to hide behind patriotic, religious or do-gooding pretences to get governments to do their dirty work.

Further to the '"9/11 Roundup of Results" post

For those interested, here is what Osama bin Laden said about what he wanted to happen as a result of the 9/11 event:

As Osama bin Laden put it in a videotaped message broadcast by al-Jazeera on November 1, 2004:

“All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa’ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note.… So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

The late terrorist leader went on to point out that

“Al-Qa’ida spent $500,000 on the [9/11 attacks], while America in the incident and its aftermath lost – according to the lowest estimates – more than 500 billion dollars, meaning that every dollar of al-Qa’ida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan with Allah’s permission.”

and

“So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah is willing and nothing is too great for Allah. That being said, those who say that al-Qa’ida has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that Al-Qa’ida is the sole factor in achieving these spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations – whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction – has helped al-Qa’ida to achieve those enormous results.”

So, I guess the smart government just keeps dancing to Osama's tune, eh? That approach has been so effective in achieving Osama's goals so far, why stop now?

Things could have been so different ...

Here is an interesting scenario for the post 9/11 world if our governments had not bought into the blood lust exploited so effectively by the military/industrial complex:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/2011910115157366771.html

Imagine, using our laws to solve our disputes! Quel concept!

... ... but then we wouldn't have had all that neat torturing, groping, spying, assassinating, bombing of civilians, and religious nuttiness to entertain us, would we?

... and who needs habeus corpus anyway? All government/police types are just cuddly good time folks out there to protect us from ... .... ... what?

9/11 roundup of results

Glenn Greenwald again has it correct:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/06/war/index.html

bin Laden will be seen as one of the effective purveyors of violence of all time. For his modest financial and human investment, he essentially has destroyed the United States and much of the western world as examples of liberal democracies flourishing under the rule of constitutional law and human rights.

In case you missed it, we are now living in a fascist, corporate-controlled thugocracy with no interest in the well being if its citizens except as sources of cannon fodder, slave labour and tax revenue to support the armies and police.

... but we are "secure" ...

Rah rah rah!

What is a Bilderberger?... , and why it matters

Taylor Caldwell wrote a novel called Captains and The Kings back in the 70s that dealt with history as made by a cabal of the rich and powerful. Its a good read.

Here is an article describing exactly how this theme is operating in today's world and the effects it has had and will have on our lives:

http://www.truth-out.org/standard-poors-and-bilderbergers-all-part-plan/1313765245

Note that the Canada meeting mentioned in the article happened at the newly opened Brookside Hotel in Kanata. Gee, doesn't that make one proud!

More on surveilance/ privacy issues

Here's Glenn Greenwald summing up the state of the art in government snooping on and persecution of its citizens:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/19/surveillance/index.html

Big Brother is watching and arresting transgressors.

Subservience ueber alles!!

Where have all the Dollars Gone

Study this chart:



This comes from The Grey Matter Blog.

Q: How can our politicians allow this to exist?
A: Those who donate money to politicians call the agenda, not voters. If fact, attempts to redistribute wealth, (ie change things from the actual current situation) are not even allowed to be discussed openly by our politicians, unless the goal is to provide more wealth for the richest in our society, such as has occurred during the last 30 years.

Where the money is being held

This article points out the extent to which corporations are holding onto the cash that governments wanted spent on job creation, mortgage relief, small business loans, etc., etc.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/18/271513/29-companies-more-cash-than-treasury/

It's amazing that this situation isn't more widely talked about. People don't seem to realize that the cash has been vacuumed out of the economy straight into corporate bank accounts and it is not being spent on things of benefit to the economy which continues to be sucked dry of cash.

On another note, the price of gold reached a new record yesterday of over $1600 per ounce. Maybe people are starting to realize that government money is not as valuable as it once was.

Time to feature the dudes!

D'Arcy just looks too worried about things sometimes -


Can you believe that Keegan was considered 'unhomeable' by the first vet who saw him after Anna rescued him from his feral colony? Look at this wild guy -

PaiKwa is very attentive to certain generous people at the dinner table -

Wylie, constantly on the alert for something to investigate -

Ka-Bloom!!

Anna's garden responded to the sun and rain and is now officially struttin' its stuff!


The walkgarden is pushing its way up around the flagstones.


And here's the butterfly bait in full bloom ...


Now we wait for butterflies.

Banks & Governments & Wars linked

Here's a very interesting theory put forward by Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com that seems to be vindicated by the behaviour of our world in the last ten years:

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/07/14/the-banksters-and-american-foreign-policy/

I find the thesis compelling because it rang true as I read through the article. It certainly means I have to re-evaluate some of the long-standing credos that have been drummed into our little heads since childhood.

Just who are the good guys nowadays?

I wonder what the price of gold is today ...

Just as I was descending into chronic cynicism ...

... along comes this article in the Guardian (UK) to reaffirm the existence of people who give a damn about civilization and basic morality. It deals with the behaviour of the American government and its lapdogs (read Canada) over the last ten years, and actually recommends trials for some political leaders, for a change. Read the details:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/12/george-w-bush-torture

We can only hope.

Too bad Spain is in such deep financial doo-doo that it has to curry favour with US banks and the IMF. They were the one country to go after and secure a conviction against Pinochet for torture etc., after all.

A soldier to admire

In this article in Glenn Greenwald's blog, we get a welcome glimpse into the mindset of one of the soldiers who participated in the infamous "Collateral Murder" video that was released by Wikileaks. It is instructive to compare the soldier's comments with the 'official' reactions to this video's release.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/11/manning/index.html

Once again, governments and established media are revealed as propaganda sources, whose prime efforts are devoted to keeping the public ignorant of the actions of those with the power to disperse taxpayers' dollars.

Good News ... for a change

Check out this article regarding the soon to arrive glut of aging hippies:

http://www.care2.com/causes/aging-artists-engaged-productive-and-far-from-retirement.html

So it's not too late to take it on the road! Yahoooo!

Now I just need some kid to carry the stuff.

Tom Englehardt State of the Union essay

This pretty well sums up Osama's victory:

http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/05/30/welcome-to-post-legal-america/

The America we thought we knew has been destroyed, and it is also happening to Canada, thanks to the efforts of our recent governments.

Some old Randolph Bourne thoughts ...

I ran across these ideas at Justin Raimondo's Antiwar site. A feast for thought one might say:

“War is the health of the State,” Randolph Bourne wrote in that discarded essay, which he probably died believing would never see print, “and it is during war that one best understands the nature of that institution.” For

it cannot be too firmly realized that war is … the chief function of States. … War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined.

Moreover, Bourne argued,

it is not too much to say that the normal relation of States is war. Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which States seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of wits, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war. Diplomacy is used while the States are recuperating from conflicts in which they have exhausted themselves. It is the wheedling and the bargaining of the worn-out bullies as they rise from the ground and slowly restore their strength to begin fighting again.

Randolph Bourne believed that informed citizens needed to realize the implications of what he was saying. For

if the State’s chief function is war, then the State must suck out of the nation a large part of its energy for its purely sterile purposes of defense and aggression. It devotes to waste or to actual destruction as much as it can of the vitality of the nation. No one will deny that war is a vast complex of life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State’s chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well. For the … calling away of energy into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing processes of the national life.

Randolph Bourne believed that “we cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect … to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form.” Bourne had reason to be wary when writing sentences like those in 1918. People were being imprisoned and, in some cases, deported for writing things like that. There was a particular prejudice against anarchists and against people who sounded as though they might be anarchists. Perhaps this is why Bourne added the following caveat to his call for ending the State: “The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated.”

More on your government's contempt for your privacy

This is worth a read:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12715

Just make sure nobody's watching you.

Now, this is interesting: Gold as cash!

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/23/utah-gold-standard-silver-currency/

There has been a lot of talk about buying gold bullion as a hedge against inflation. That a state government would alter its laws to permit this is astounding.

What this does is repudiate the current practice of governments paying off their debts by printing more paper money backed by nothing tangible. This effectively forces those at the bottom of the economic chain (that's you & me) to pay for government excess by accepting the new lower value dollars as our wages.

Keep an eye on this to see if Utah is allowed to get away with it.

Remember when your daughter getting groped by some goon at a high school dance...

... was something you worried about ? Now the school board hires the groper!

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2122102.shtml

Something about a society that tolerates this is profoundly obscene! Not just the groping, but the official sanctioning of the groping as a valid function of government.

Remember, the government is only doing this for your own good.