A Bit of an Oul Rant here

What's happening in that big wild country to the south of us here in Canada?

We can't avoid the US news here as we are forever linked via trade and economies, etc. Wags have compared The US and Canada relationship as the elephant and the mouse in bed together and if the elephant rolls over.......

2023 - a partial summary of barbaric events.

• I won't even speak of the criminal running for office with the support of his party. If he's elected president it will be a final full stop on their downward slide into autocracy and fascism.
• Termination of Roe v Wade. Women's reproductive rights go the way of The Handmaid's Tale.
• A 12 year old 7th grader forced to give birth in Mississippi. A child-victim of rape. 
• The governor of Texas telling the world he would shoot emigrants and the only thing stopping him is Biden would charge him with murder.
• Mass shootings in the gun slinging USA 2023 and school shootings increased.
• Ignoring the ongoing slaughter and genocide (and potential extermination) of Palestinian civilians - women, children and babies amongst them. The US has used its veto power at least 34 times to block UN Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel. ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/UN. Link

Gun violence by country 2021. Note 2023 for the US is much worse.

It might surprise readers to know that the land mass of Canada is greater than the US

/Rant

Changing the Headlines

I have backed away from all US news. It does my head in. Yes, even the rah-rah speeches of the gleeful Dems, the pitiful tweets (now in rage CAPS) of the so-called leader of the free world. The knowledge, deep within, that the disregard for humanity, the endless "wars", the economy based on billionaires' investments in the military industrial complex and pharmaceuticals and yes, the awful underbellies of porn, drugs and trafficking, may never go away but may have a prettier coating depending on how educated and civil the new dear leader will be. I feel terrible for my USian friends, most of whom are as clear eyed as I am and just want to change the current fascist regime for one not so blatantly and appallingly racist, misogynistic and brutal in its murderous rampage on its own citizens. So I've switched off many of the news-feeds. Tuning out the insanity if you will.

I had a kind of dread shrouding me. Couldn't verbalize it until a fellow sufferer put a long post on FB last night as he tried to rise above his own cloud of anxiety.

And I remembered a long ago conversation with a shaman of my acquaintance. Long since passed now, I would think. I was very honoured to be accepted and loved by aboriginals of my acquaintance whose depth of knowledge continues to astound me. We have so much to learn.

I was going on about something or other, as I am wont to do, and she said "Change your daily headline."
I passed this on to my friend Larry last night. And we both resolved to do that. Change the headlines. He is currently completing a cabin in the woods. So his headlines will be about his progress in that.

So mine today are:

Exquisite Quilled Card Received from New York Friend with Eternal Love Professed Within!

(PS The owl is my spirit animal).

1960 Picture of High School Choir Unearthed and Mailed by Friend of 65 years!

77 Year Old Woman still grinds her dark roast coffee beans from scratch every morning!

What would your headlines today be?

Back in the Saddle.

I am sick and tired of this depraved and senseless world we live in. I look at the statistical map of mass killings in the US and think: no one does anything, those who are elected to serve and protect only protect the gun lobbies, the NRA. 'We the people' is a fallacy, truly. A sop to the masses.

I look at the murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada well over 1,000 and counting just about daily and think: no one gives a shyte. Our man Harper focuses on Niqabs and the wearing of them at citizen oath-taking ceremonies and the troops rally around that particular flag and sends him skyrocketing in the polls,(our election looms shortly)which says a whole pile about our electorate and their hidden prejudices and women hatred. Forgetting, of course, that not too long ago Xtian nuns were so garbed and in some cases hidden behind screens even from their parents, looking at you Carmelites.

I predicted, way back months ago, that Trump and Harper would be the kings of North America. Two first class manipulators, millionaires, man-beasts. Both held in thrall to the worst of capitalism and fundamentalism, slurping at the troughs of oil, the standards of industrial militarism held high, death to the brownies, the blackies, the other than Xtian belief systems. Not forgetting, in Harper's case, overt references to the "Old Stock" Canadians - i.e. the founding-rampaging-death-to-all-aboriginals "fathers". In Harperland your legitimate citizenship can be revoked if you don't behave. Even if you were born here. Stasi-land, Harper style. And I haven't gone into the spying network he has set in place to monitor the "New Stock" citizenry like yours truly and presumably those pesky First Nations people with their protests and marches against clear cutting and unbridled oil-derrick hoistings.

I backed away, consciously, several years ago from political commentary, it was frying up my brain. But it seems that lately the corruption, callousness and trampling of rights is breathtaking in its audacity and horror. I am compelled to vent.

Terrorism as 'out there' no longer exists, if it ever did.

Terrorism, in many forms, is right at our own front doors.

Blog Jam and 9/11

Well from Friday on I got worse and worse, to the point when having dinner with a friend I couldn't finish it (you'd have to know me to know I never go off my feed). Every bone in my body ached, my glands were swollen, my head was stuffed. Daughter said I must be the canary in the coalmine. By Sunday, after a couple of sleepless nights I decided to pack up and leave. Quickly.

Thanks for all the support on this. I have researched smog in Toronto and even though hundreds (maybe thousands?) die of it each year, there is very little research as to symptoms and long term effects. It is scary. I am reminded of my naturopathic doctor who, about a decade ago, performed research on behalf of the government into the pollution in Toronto and presented her papers in Ottawa and promptly moved far away telling me before she left that it was one of the most toxic cities on the planet.

I am taking it easy driving myself and Ansa across the country (it's an amble, maybe a final one) and feel so much better already, my bones no longer ache, my head is clearing, my mind is not in panic attack mode. I think Daughter is correct. The air is so clean in Newfoundland that the shock of Toronto smog is unbearable to my system. I am now about 450K into a 2100K trip to the ferry.

I was over at Nick's - please go read his post on 9/11 - and composed quite a lengthy comment and to my utter frustration it vapourized, so I'm assembling my thoughts on this again.

I was out with a friend for dinner and she was discussing all the endless hooplah around the 10 year anniversary when I suddenly threw at her:

"But the terrorists have won, haven't they?"

And she leaped up in joy and said:

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! No one has said this are they all blind, deaf and dumb?"

We discussed this at length, the trillions in treasure spent on illegal invasions and "homeland security", money which could have been spent on universal health care and child poverty, infant and elder mortality (one of the highest in the "first" world) - how many more million children need to be on foodstamps and without basic healthcare - the soaring unemployment rate, the homelessness of the once middle class citizens (millions again at last count). If it was Osama Bin Laden who instigated the tragedy of 9/11 (and believe me I am totally sympathetic to the victims and their families) he must have been rubbing his hands in glee at the bankruptcy he has created in his hated USA. Mission accomplished indeed.

And speaking of Bin Laden, whatever goodwill was left for the US after these catastrophic "wars on terror", the tortures and renditions of many innocent "foreigners" along with millions massacred as "collateral damage" - half estimated to be young children - the final nail in the coffin of moral high ground was the manner in which he and his wife were murdered in cold blood, in a country they had no permission to be in, without trial, and the bodies thrown out at sea. Justice. Frontier style. Government as lynch mob.

I am enraged for my many American friends and those who read my blog who have my total respect and admiration and who are witnesses to their country being so thoroughly trashed in the decade since 9/11 with their treasure stolen for the oligarchs in fruitless foreign invasions and massacres.

The opportunity for continued world peace was wasted and the continuing global economic havoc and instability will not be over in my lifetime, if ever.

Yes We Can: 100 Days of Same Old, Same Old...

Lots of hoopla about; though the obstinate bleating of Hope! Change! are dying down a little, n’est pas?


I can't shrug off this feeling of unease I have, deep in the old gut. That the very worst hasn’t remotely happened yet. That none of the real issues are being dealt with. Everywhere in North America infrastructure is being touted as the saviour of the economy. More roads, more lanes, more construction. To what Happy McMansion with what Happy McCar?

Yeah, the daughters are cute, the wife brilliant, the dog adorable but the 100 Day record is now standing bleakly by itself, like a shrine to his predecessor.

However, the brilliant John Pilger says it so much better than I can:

In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.

And here we have the President’s stance on Gaza and the atrocities there:

All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office

And no one is leaving Iraq even though the soldiers there are now knocking each other off.

Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of smoking is good for you – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in.

And I find it particularly hard to stomach Obama’s new best friend: Henry Kissinger, the despicable war criminal.

Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.

Read complete article here.

And don’t get me started on the Goldman Sachs’ ex-staffers sprinkled all over the Obama cabinet, holding out their hands for more bailouts, more bonuses, more leeching at the till of good tax payer money being poured down the bottomless pits of CEOs’ pockets.

Policies that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.

Wall Street has infiltrated every aspect of the ‘new government’. While:

At the same time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The case of Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous character of relations between the Obama administration and the American financial elite.
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a leading advocate of banking deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The Times article notes that among his current responsibilities is deciding “whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge funds.”
Summers is not an exception. He is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well. David Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of Long and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was bailed out and seized by federal regulators in September.

Read more at Global Research

But there are rumblings of distress amongst the populace who are beginning to shrug off the election torpor of Happy Days are Here Again. Even with the red alert of The Big Swine Flu Distraction.

Guns and ammunition are disappearing off the shelves. Dry goods are being accumulated by those who have a few pennies of their own left.

The harsh and painful reality of millions of homeless, foodless and jobless, corruption at the highest level and no one taking care of the store at home is finally beginning to sink in.

We are on our own. Pass the Koolaid.

Seven Years in Afghanistan=Bin Laden Still at Large+Tougher Al Qaeda

A country in economic freefall with wars invasions on one too many fronts is doomed for failure.

I can think of no instance in history where a nation has triumphed given all these strikes against it. We only need look at the Roman and British Empires for starters.

The military presence in Iraq, apart from the millions of 'collaterally damaged' innocent Iraqi civilians murdered and displaced has resulted in an incomprehensible number of injured, depressed and suicidal U.S. military veterans, many of whom roam the U.S. streets on their return. it will only be a matter of time before some go on a murderous rampage in the absence of funds to deal with their PTSDs.

Bob Herbert, whom I've long admired, in today's New York Times, writes of the two disastrous campaigns on these two beleagured countries. He says, in part, about Afghanistan:

We invaded Afghanistan more than seven years ago. We have not broken the back of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. We have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden. We don’t even have an escalation strategy, much less an exit strategy. An honest assessment of the situation, taking into account the woefully corrupt and ineffective Afghan government led by the hapless Hamid Karzai, would lead inexorably to such terms as fiasco and quagmire. Instead of cutting our losses, we appear to be doubling down.

Isn't it time someone, anyone, in the policical scene in Washington studied history?For was there never a more pressing time than now when we appear to be doomed to repeat it endlessly?

And maybe they'd, eureka!, discover that no invading army has ever, ever won in Afghanistan.