Category Archives: Soft Fascism

We Need to Prepare for Those Worse Than Trump

 

It’s one thing to lower the bar, but with Trump, someone pulled out the jackhammer and has dug through the floor.

Donald Trump Went On A Baffling 3AM Twitter Rant About Sex Tapes ...But let’s not assume that Trump is the low ebb or an aberration. He signifies another level altogether of political contempt.

Politicians have a sense of entitlement and natural objection to transparency and accountability, having spent generations rigging the system to let them slide easily into power. Add in rich, white and male entitlements and we see the majority of politicians more than doubling down on arrogance.

But we can’t just presume things will get better after Trump.

  1. He has established a new realm of political behaviour that will allow equally or more repulsive and anti-social miscreants to seek their populist masses to champion.
  2. Current contemptuous politicians will see new capacity to dig even further into the slime in the political culture of their region.
  3. Politicians with integrity will find even more competitors dealing in abject lies which will increasingly go unchecked by corporate media that has been whipped into submission/irrelevance by the brashness of lying politicians and the self-immolating corporate media and their brand new level of apathy towards to truth and fact-checking all to serve the profitability of the corporate media owners’ agenda to serve the interests of their political compradors.

Solutions!

  1. We need to support media with integrity. Don’t expect this to come from corporate media. Look for independent media and amplify their voices. Remember, it was CANADALAND that broke the Jian Ghomeshi debacle.
  2. Use your own personal social networks to share information critical for participating in our civic duty. Not Facebook posts which must meet the elements of their fancy algorithms to even reach your people, try email or text messages or cocktail parties [we should have more of these] or brunches or phone calls to talk about life. And include political truths your people need to know. You don’t have to BECOME the media, you just need to amplify the positive messages.
  3. Next, go directly to political parties’/candidates’ websites to see where they really stand and what they’re saying in particular and in context. Amplify that, criticize that, augment that, demand better policy than that. The same goes for the contemptuous politicians: read their policy, compare it with what they say, and note the contradictions.
  4. Remember, you and me and all of us are the employers of these politicians. They constantly try to encourage us to obey them. This is nonsense. We need to resist that abusive stance and recognize our own power.
  5. Bernie Sanders almost became the Democratic nominee for president. He did that despite the successful work of corporate media and the Clinton/Party coalition to shut down and censor his message. Once he lost the California primary, the Democracy for America movement mobilized to nominate progressive Senate and House candidates. Controlling/influencing Congress could be a powerful element in fixing America. You will encounter people of integrity and vision who could lead us, not necessarily as elected leaders, but mobilizers who can help liberate us all from our pasty, weak democracy and the rise of soft fascism.

Get busy, and don’t be afraid.

And plan a cocktail party!

Update, and a new solution:

Read this #FacePalm piece, and look at this:

trumpeducation

 

End Our Slow Motion Genocide!

Genocide can take place in slow motion, just like weapons of mass destruction.

When I learned that people were calling land mines “weapons of mass destruction, in slow motion,” it became obvious that we can practice social/cultural/human genocide in slow motion too.

Understanding racism and genocide is no simpler than this,
from Zianna Oliphant:

Considering the people we have colonized, enslaved and oppressed in North America the last 500 years, there have been times when the genocide was more rapid, urgent and hurried.

There have also been times when it has been slow. Like entropy.

First Nations in Canada, American Indians and African Americans are among the groups that white supremacists have been trying to eradicate.

And by white supremacists, I’m not talking about the Klan and Skinheads. I’m talking about the Canadian and American settler governments who have overt, covert, active and passive policies to eradicate those they deem inferior.

For, if we white settlers actually felt these oppressed groups were equal to us, we would actually stop the policies and practices that eliminate them from our world.

We would address homicides and summary executions by police, missing and murdered indigenous women, the reserve/reservation townships, the prison industrial complex, and all other policies and practices that have been clearly demonstrated to pursue our slow motion genocide agenda.

There aren’t enough hashtags to encompass all who have been recently or historically slaughtered in this slow motion genocide.

Here’s just the latest, this week: #AlfredOlango, executed by police in the slow motion genocide charge of “Having A Seizure While Black”:

http://fusion.net/story/351795/alfred-olango-shooting-el-cajon/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fusion&utm_content=link

But I have a solution for you, my fellow white people governed by white supremacist North American governments. Scroll back up and watch, again, the wise and stunning statement from Zianna Oliphant in Charlotte who can so clearly see what kind of racist culture we are perpetuating. Honestly, if it is that clear to a child, but not Mike Ditka [an ignorant racist], you need to decide if you side with the wise child, or the racist former football coach.

“Part of white privilege has been the ability to not know that your privilege exists. If you benefit from racism, do you really want to know that?” Do you? Then read this, and act accordingly:

The DNC Superdelegates Can Fix Party Corruption This Week

superdelegatesIn case you missed it, Clinton and the DNC are corrupt, and have been for a long time. They and their media partners have worked hard to keep Bernie Sanders from becoming the Democratic nominee for president.

And still, he almost won in the primaries and caucuses. What could he have accomplished if the DNC wasn’t corrupt. How much earlier would he have become the presumptive nominee if the media gave him more than a tiny fraction of coverage compared to what Clinton received.

And what about those anti-democratic superdelegates, many of whom had sided with Clinton before anyone else had even started a campaign?

It turns out that the superdelegates are in a unique positions to fix the corruption of the Democratic Party by switching their choice to Sanders.

How? It’s easy. Look at the math in the graphic above, sourced just today.

Sanders already has 47 superdelegates. He needs 504 of Clinton’s 604 superdelegates to flip to him to win the nomination.

So the “how” isn’t the problem. The problem is the “why.”

These superdelegates are in that position because they’re loyal to the DNC and its cabal of operators and insiders. THEY are embedded in the corruption of the party itself, and their inherent anti-democratic status just reinforces that.

So why would they throw their political masters under the bus?

  1. Trump’s convention bump is massive. And disturbing. But it does reinforce the view that Americans are sick of corrupt, rigged, insider politics. Unfortunately, they see Trump as the one to burn down that house, as opposed to Sanders who could help rebuild America and democracy differently from how Trump would. Check out Turkey this month to see how Trump would wield power.
  2. Clinton dodged an indictment on her email server scandal, but her trustworthiness continues to suffer, especially among key demographics. The leaked emails only reinforce how she likes to cheat. And the party does too: serious credibility and legitimacy problem.
  3. Trump now polls ahead of Clinton. Sanders polled further ahead of Trump than Clinton did.
  4. If the DNC crisis inflames further this week, perhaps with more Wikileaks emails, the “party establishment” may have to call in more fire trucks to put out the fire, right up to throwing Clinton under the bus. They would do that by making the superdelegates flip to Sanders.
  5. If the Democrats are betting that people vote for Clinton to keep Trump from winning, they’re seeing that as every hour goes by, that hope is transforming into delusion. It’s no empty threat that people will vote Trump because Clinton and the DNC are so corrupt.

The party may figure this all out. If they feel the pressure enough this week, and they can see a strongly credible route to defeat by Trump, even Clinton is expendable.

Remember, political parties want power more than anything else. Even a Sanders Democratic presidency would allow the people really in charge of the DNC to control the country.

And in the end, they want it not because they can’t stand Trump. They want it because they want power, with whatever horse can get them across the finish line.

And here’s your Easter Egg: the DNC’s non-apology apology. So galling.

On Tuesday, Corporate Media Played You. Did You Catch It?

Is this from the movie" UP " awesome :3 I miss those days (\o|o/) Lawl ...Which was the most important news story on Tuesday this week? And which news story was overshadowed by corporate media coverage of the other 3?

  1. Donald Trump was officially nominated and elected as the Republican candidate for president, despite attempts to derail that surreal event.
  2. Donald Trump’s wife plagiarized Michelle Obama in her speech.
  3. There was something going on between Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. I still don’t know what. And no, I won’t seek a link for this. Please.
  4. And the soon to be big[ger] story that Mrs. Trump Rickrolled the Republican convention and the country.

The answer to both questions, obviously[?], is #1.

But the media pointed out some squirrels with which to distract us from the torturous reality that a major American political party is in such a state of delusion that Mr. Trump is their gift to the White House.

This is something we should all be debating and planning to avert! But we can’t if the Kanye/Kim/Taylor/Melania show is on.

So. Did you catch it? Or did corporate media get you again on Tuesday? If you caught it, you are allowed to like us in the Facebook.

Spoiler: yesterday we learned that Trump thinks the president’s job is to Make America Great Again while letting his vice-president take care of domestic and international policy. It’s now the Texas Bush-Cheney Chainsaw Massacre, Part Deux!

Oh. And here’s your Easter Egg.

Sanders’ Iowa “Win” and Clinton’s Entitlement

Clinton breathed a sigh of relief and spun the result: thanks for the “win.”

Source: From Iowa to New Hampshire: Latest Updates on 2016

This was no win. Despite the massive corporate media campaign to ignore Sanders, he did exceptionally well because he resonates with actual people.

Democratic Results in Iowa »

  Pct. Delegates
 Hillary Clinton
49.9% 22
Bernie Sanders
49.6 21
Martin O’Malley 0.6

If Clinton were to switch back to the Republican Party right now, I’m sure she’d win the White House easily. But being the corporate candidate in a leftward drifting Democratic Party, she has everything to lose.

With Sanders’ lead in NH polling, a win there may cripple the Clinton campaign.

By the way, have you read Michael Moore’s endorsement of Sanders yet? There’s a great image that explains how Clinton loses, if she does.

And a special note for Canadians…A Sanders presidency is the best hope we have of scuttling the TPP for Canada!

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Why I Joined Team Mulcair

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair speaks at a campaign event in Toronto, Aug ...

After years of concern about what a second Harper majority government would do to eradicate the rest of what I love about Canada, I’ve been able to reject fear and embrace change. But it was a long process that required coming to terms with Tom Mulcair. And I did.

And so should you, which is why you should also be able to let go of any urge to vote for the Liberal Party.

As trade unionists we should be voting not only in our interests, but in the interests of the country. The great thing about being in the working class is that those interests are largely aligned.

We should not be fooled into thinking that terrorists are on the verge of blowing up our hallowed hockey arenas and legislatures. That’s Harper’s fear we need to continue rejecting.

We also should not be fooled into thinking that the Occupy Movement was irrelevant. As a political economist, one of my hobbies is to monitor right wing, neoliberal institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But what I’ve tracked very closely is that all three right wing organizations, and many others, have started insisting that economic inequality is a huge threat to global stability: the core idea in the Occupy Movement.

But how do all these ideas lead to our fall election?

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are bad for Canada and Canadians.

And the trick has been in how to actually get rid of him, considering how much his party has cheated in and between the last few elections.

A luring notion has been percolating since the 2011 election: some sort of electoral co-operation, if necessary. And why not? Our current first-past-the-post electoral system continues to reward majority governments with absolute power to parties that get less than 50% of the popular vote.

And the big idea was to look to the Liberals and NDP to oust Harper’s Conservatives. The NDP’s Orange Crush brought the party to official opposition status. Jack Layton had just died. Ignatieff drifted back to Harvard and a younger Trudeau emerged as a contender to lead the Liberals into a new era.

And many people examined Mulcair, and found his personality, leadership charisma and appeal lacking. After all, Jack Layton was a beacon of optimism.

The NDP leadership race came down to Cullen, Topp and Mulcair.

Nathan Cullen touted co-operation with the Liberals to save Canada from Harper. Leadnow.ca, the powerful citizen mobilizer group, embraced that goal as well.

Brian Topp had never been elected and was running to become leader of the opposition, which was a stretch despite his history as a campaigner.

Tom Mulcair was successful in helping deliver Quebec, which had already warmed to Jack Layton, and was an experienced.,effective parliamentarian.

I supported Cullen and a co-operative approach, with the hope of achieving electoral reform as well.

But I joined Team Mulcair this past spring. And I had a number of compelling realizations as I changed my mind about how to save Canada, which I present here, chronologically:

  1. The political economist in me was impressed with Mulcair’s ability to litigate and coherently attack Stephen Harper’s anti-Canada agenda during question period in the House of Commons. Justin Trudeau has been largely ineffective in parliament.
  2. Starting in mid-2014, the NDP started releasing its election platform, well over a year before the fixed election date of October 19, 2015. After hearing little from the party about what policies the Mulcair-led policy would champion, I was impressed. There was action on climate change, an inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, economic equality policies, treating veterans with dignity, and many more. Meanwhile the Liberals had little to offer that was inspiring at all.
  3. Then, last Spring, Trudeau criticized the NDP for providing parliamentary office space for its staff union, but this nasty turn should not have surprised unions so much. Last decade, the Liberal Party promised to vote for federal anti-scab legislation. Then, they voted against it. The Liberal Party is not the party of unions or working people.
  4. Also last spring, as Mulcair continued to expand his personality and charisma, and win over NDP activist friends of mine who found him more engaging and inspiring than I ever had, the NDP stood strong and voted against the fascist bill C-51. Trudeau voted for it, despite claiming it was bad, but that he’d fix it once in power. In wanting to avoid alienating the right wing of his party, he alienated the many of the rest. This fence-straddling is typical for this party historically. But no more free pass for the party that campaigns from the left and governs from the right. I’m done with that kind of lying.

And by the summer, the Liberals were dropping in most demographics, the NDP was ahead of the Conservatives almost everywhere and voting Liberal anywhere in the country became impotent.

Looking back, the NDP won 103 seats and came second in over 100 ridings in 2011. Trudeau is missing. Mulcair has come into his own. Alberta inspired the whole country by embracing the NDP for change provincially. And Harper has driven our economy, rights and freedoms into the ground.

The NDP are fully capable of ridding us of Harper’s Conservatives for good.

That’s why I joined Team Mulcair. And so should you.

A version of this piece shows up in the Labour Day 2015 issue of Our Times magazine.

Harper’s Campaign Against a Mythical Netflix Tax Backfires, Badly

Check out our savvy PM, getting all hashtaggy on us all!

But to quote Mr. Layton from 2011, it’s become a #Fail, or, “Hashtag-Fail” if you will.

You see, our PM has decided to say that others want to bring in a Netflix Tax.  So he opposed it. But he just made that up.

And now social media is punishing him. With the aplomb we’ve come to expect…remember #TellVicEverything?

Try the trending #NoNetflixTax to see what people are doing to our lying PM.

Some unlucky social media intern is going to get heinously fired for this!

And, because FUN, there’s a new hashtag game called #HarperANetflixShow.

https://twitter.com/PatOndabak/status/629135939508441089

And you’d think the PM would be more careful with the blindfold and the loaded semi-automatic pistol that is social media. I mean, it’s not like there’s a leader’s debate tonight or anything…oh wait!

What could possibly go wrong?

But wait, there’s more!

What got me doing a little Cape Breton jig last night was the possibility that Harper’s plan to call such a long election campaign has dissolved parliament in such a fashion that he may be required to testify to whatever he really did in the Mike Duffy bribery scandal!

It’s like Christmas in July, and not in a Pierre Poilievre way!

Enjoy the debate tonight!

Stephen Harper Is Such a Bad Economist!

He says he’s awesome, but he’s so bad, that on the economy he’s the worst prime minister since WWII.

And his campaign is “don’t change horses in mid-stream, I’m a great economist, we aren’t in a recession, we have a balanced budget and only I can protect you from the terrorist onslaught that wants to kill us all.”

All lies.

And here’s some data that demonstrates Harper’s delusion that he knows anything useful about economics:

Is Greece the Front Line in the War Against Neoliberalism?

The EU is a powerful vehicle for neoliberalism. When democracy in Greece pushes back, we see the length the EU will go to punish and control Greece.

Neoliberalism is inherently anti-democratic. Greece deserves our support. And we need to continue to oppose neoliberalism and the soft fascism in Canada [like C-51] that the Conservative and Liberal coalition have been pushing for decades.

Viewed from either side of the political spectrum, the EU looks like a disaster right now:

  • The conservatives are proven correct about the way the EU takes away national sovereignty: The Greeks voted in a referendum to reject the bailout … but were forced to accept it anyway.
  • And the leftists are proven correct about the way the banks control everything, and everyone else gets screwed: The Greek economy has been brought to its knees by debt, provided first by private investment banks like Goldman Sachs and then by Europe’s ruling German-French elite in the IMF and the EU. The entire bailout is structured to benefit the lending banks the most, not the people of Greece.

Suddenly, the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists look like they were right all along!

This is the environment into which British Prime Minister David Cameron is calling for a national in/out referendum on the EU in the UK next year.

He couldn’t have picked a worse time.

Source: Europe’s leaders are openly worrying about ‘violence’ and ‘revolution’ if Greece goes wrong | Business Insider

My Canada Includes…The Future!

Inspired by Nora Loreto [again], I am starting to frame my vision for what Canada should be after C-51, the TRC report and the October 19, 2015 federal election.

Here are my initial thoughts:

I’d love it for the very foundation upon which Canada [sic] is built, to crumble! We can start a national dialogue to re-imagine it, but way better than for 1982. This time, let’s go with:

– a distinct Quebec society
– First Nations at the table as equ
als
– repeal C-51 and get our Charter back
– repeal the Indian Act
– no Senate
– proportional representation
– dump the monarchy
– pay equity
– a national minimum wage as the living wage
– fair trade, not free trade [so dump NAFTA and all the rest…]
– move to the post-carbon energy and transportation infrastructure
– real and complete Medicare
– national strategies for housing, childcare, mental health, environment, seniors…
– repealing corporate personhood

Is that too much to ask? [Hint: no!]

MY CANADA includes all that!

And probably more!