Tidbits and notions. Stuff and blither. News and snooze. This little gmiphloglet be short and more mirth than matter.
I’m trying to lay off the politics, I am. Ah, well. Sometimes the goat gets got.
…didn’t just have a single lapse in defending the USA’s jolly little war to the UN. He was THE megaphone for pushing the war, by jingo, the only member of the government with enough real gravitas to do so. And he did, over and over. Albeit we now that Iraq’s abject proneness was a “known known” to him and Bush’s entire Halliburton suckling cabinet. The GOP used him and his credibility as a tool to hook both the USA populace and London lapdogs. He expected to be made president for it, probably. Instead, they hung him with the dirty laundry. Powell was a patsy and a huckster, another organ of a morally degenerate regime chuckling, “let them eat yellowcake” as they gargled the blood of millions from Mrs. Lincoln’s teacups.
Speaking of liberal political mystiques I do not grok… It will be interesting to see what hash the Wunderkind can make of the crow he is eating today. I consistently underestimate his ability to stick his foot in his mouth and somehow come out smiling. Clintonian redolences indeed.
Hillary Rodham Clinton shilled on CBC for her new ghostwritten novel. A spunky SecState protagonist, natch. The interviewer is practically drooling on herself in starfuckery. I am rather curious as to these haute bourgeois boomer white women who fall hard for the Clintonite “strong woman” mystique. They identify with Clinton’s cynically curated in-group “sisterhood” in ways largely alien for the rest of us rabble, we supposed sisters who would never share anecdotes of Barnard or antiquing the Hamptons or Beltway soirées. An interesting exemplar of the mentality, and how Clinton’s “pantsuit nation” was a feckless propagandistic standard from the get go.
I don’t hold to oligarchs being given any space privileges, never mind their own private fleets. How do we allow this madness? But it was nice that Shatner got to go up, a fitting slice of poetry. Whoever thought up that gimmick no doubt got a rise.
The leader of the Chieftains has gone out of this world. His light still shines through the music. Death is a fey thing, whispering “memento mori”.
Is she going to say it? I think she is! Say, say! Yes, she actually mentioned human overpopulation as a major cause of extinction. Thank you, ecologist, for your intellectual honesty in mentioning the unmentionable.
If you’re a scientist, especially one likely to be interviewed, for Heaven’s sake go to Toastmasters and learn how to engagingly speak about your research without too much technobabble. It’s entirely possible. I promise.
If you don’t like being lectured by children yelling “blablabla”, quit acting like petulant brats.
The “housing shortage” is a lie. It’s really a bourgeois real estate speculation crisis. No one in Shanghai has any business owning a Vancouver house. Ban it. (Just try going the other way. Good luck getting a housing permit in PRC!)
The USA bank bailout in ‘08 was a blank check finally totalled at between 12-16 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s in 2008 money. The lump sum handed off without strings was so huge it’s difficult to actually tally. It could feed generations. And no doubt much of that is now stocked up tax free in Bermuda. If you think 3.5 trillion over 5 years or whatever for malnourished precariat children to possibly have a future is too big, you’re living in bourgeois courtier class ladeedahland.
CBC: Coming up, the Covid crisis in Alberta; how should we force these gravel throwing wingnuts to get the vaccine? But before that, a retrospective of the first national Day for Truth and Reconciliation and a panel of indigenous people discuss where they hope the process of reconciliation goes from here…
NPR: The USA narrowly avoided a governmental shutdown again last night, as “moderate” Democrats standing up for patriotic businessmen’s interests are impeded by the “far left” demagogues of the dirty peasant rabble. But first, here’s a talking head on Marketplace lecturing why the mudblood peons should be grateful for 8$ minimum wage and no health insurance…
Over 5000 unmarked graves of indigenous children have been discovered this summer alone. Children died, abused and alone, many starving at the schools better termed concentration camps. These camps chucked them in pits by the hundreds. The government of the day knew the death toll (25% or more per annum) and intentionally perpetrated genocidal conditions. I’m ambivalent about symbolic gestures like state holidays. But we should hope that Canadians take this moment to heart as a fundamental realignment toward a new communal engagement on good faith, healthy terms with indigenous communities. Call it reconciliation or decolonization or whatever, but it’s high time to build a greater commonwealth.
Oh, NPR. When I get down on Canada, I just turn on USA radio. It doesn’t last long. The lockstep business elite sycophantry (hi, Marketplace) the totalitarian mood underpinned by cynicism and despair, the lack of care for any cohort beyond the hermetically sealed professional classes, the bizarre cultural myopia and provincial disregard of pressing global issues. NPR is the best it gets, but a dour moral cesspit compared to CBC and RNZI. I’d add BBC and ABC (the real one, not the Disney one), but the UK nor AU don’t bother broadcasting to North America anymore. Not even QSL cards come from the former!
JB McKinnon (sp?) discusses his book When the World Stopped Buying. Re: plain living, anti-consumerism, Covid simplicity, capitalism… He did an experiment where he stopped buying into disposability culture. They discuss the eccentrics who don’t want to participate in the mainstream rat race and I realized he was talking about me. Strange to discover the envy which some of the professional classes have for those who opt out… I do hope he is correct, that the “return of normal” post-Covid will see large segments analyze their priorities in a deeper way, resist the consumeristic hook. Perhaps this underpins the whining which low wage employers have been voicing; people don’t want to work under their soul stealing drudgery. World’s smallest violin plays again for the bosses. 🎻
Such a nostalgic delight to listen to Rewind, with decent Commonwealth voices speaking with decorous humour. It’s a good baseline for how much richness risks being lost with Americanization. It’s not merely about phonemes and lexicon, but the habits of conversation, the reserves of civility. In an era where everyone thumps our chests without editorial contemplation, it is a good which is nearly lost to our shame. Not to say phonetics and lexicon are for naught. One infers that CBC has guidelines banning the famous “eh”, amongst many other local shibboleths in favour of a nearly General American greyness. Thus doth the cultural cringe function to eradicate even imperial intimacies. It is well to be aware of such subtle iniquities as we enter the UN Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Excellent Canadian post-election roundup, especially focussing on climate crisis policy proposals. A good overview of where the dominion stands. My feeling? A disgusted sadness that the Greens fell on their sword in the stupidest way as the other parties mumbled over what they might do someday soon, they totally swear. Given such lack of good faith, until we make Greta Thunberg planetary climate tsar, we are probably screwed.
An excellent report today on how genomics research feeds into big data genetics surveillance and colonialism. Pure exploitation mining and selling private (and sacrosanct!) biological data.
1. Nothing gives me anxious quease and mournful relief in equal mixture quite like USA selling nuclear sleeper subs to Australia.
2. Every time you say “China” when you mean the so-called “‘PRC’”, a hanfu fashionista dies.
3. If you think the Rio Grande refugee situation is bad, just wait 10 years when humans die en masse within 20° of the equator.
4. PRC can’t do bally all because it is globalized. Unless the mainland economy crashes, but that’s not… wait.
5. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Is it *really* the dark side to say: find the antivax morons, hog tie them, and then vaccinate them? How about herd them all into Alberta and rename it Antivaxistan? Plenty of food and all the oil they want to drink.
Listening to the Democrats finally struggle via penny pinching to achieve the social safety and medical programmes the Commonwealth had since 1949. I can be hard on Canada, especially the prairie moral cesspits. But good gravy is the USA an overgrown banana republic. Better an expensive vanity election than the whole government shutting down and large sections like Dixieland almost literally returning to slave state feudalism. It’s time for the planet to realize that the USA is plum wacko, is not going to get better; time to start forming other options to provide for an “international community”.
It will serve the urban bourgeoisie right if Evergrande defaults. Suddenly Canadian cities will discover there is NO housing shortage, as myriads of empty shell condominiums cribbed by Shanghai parvenues now come up for sale. Scores of cities across the world may face the same. If it hits the SF Bay metroplex, even better. The evicted proles will chuckle with delight as Google gentrifiers go deep underwater with their leaning tower follies. I must confess I will find it hard to weep.
中秋節快樂！⋯有點多餘的月餅沒有啊？🥮🙏🏼🎑
I used to think the USA Greens were an abberation for their feckless inanity. But certainly the CA Greens are giving them a run for their carbon credits on that score.
CBC just called it for Grits, probably a minority government. The coverage is typical horse racing, save one point: a PPC supporter candidly expounding on his grinding bitterness. The panel found him impertinent, but it’s clear from the numbers that the PPC are a large subaltern. Having heard these people’s envy of Trumpsters for years, I’m not surprised on the whole by their high jinks. It’s ridiculous to say that Covid is the cause of the ugliness. Ottawa ignores these people at the dominion’s peril.
Several species of juniper have long been used as an abortifacient, by several American indigenous nations and Persians. Brew a tea with the berries and green stems. They are also diuretics, natch, so watch the kidneys. Sources: Burrows’ Toxic Plants of North America; Falcon Medicinal Plants of North America.
Juniper berry is also lovely in dishes with mushrooms, I daresay.
I really don’t understand what Trudeau is on about, often. He right mucked himself by calling the election. Trudeau makes an art of survival by mediocrity. This sort of feckless hubris is endemic to dynasties. Sadly, I doubt Canada will take a cue from recent events to go with Jagmeet. At least one way or another the Albertans will be happy, cough hack.
…is that wacky sitcom where an old hippie known as Uncle Gopher suddenly has to adopt his delightfully irrepressible, 8 year old, orphaned niece Gemini. Then they go off to Rainbow Gathering. High jinks and laugh tracks ensue.
…is the cat’s pyjamies, chaps. Get it Jamaican as possible and “diet” so it doesn’t overwhelm the tingle with cloy.
…yet burn. Have we drunk enough oil yet?
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Excellent interview on CSPAN with the author of The Afghan Papers. A compleat look at the total 20 year quagmire and the feckless USA political class who knowingly, criminally mismanaged it.
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/announcing-roophloch-2021.txt
It is ROOPHLOCH, which event I seem to always miss. But I shall endeavour to participate anon, as I’m most decidedly off grid. Thanks to a pal for the head’s up.
The internet was a mistake.
2020 Massey lecture by Ron Diebert suggesting social media and infotech surveillance regimes need “restraint” under liberal democracy as their best response. Abolition or rejection is judged futile. Whenever someone suggests “resistance is futile”, I know someone is getting paid.
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