Neoliberalism’s Legacy

This Chris Hedges post inspired my listing below, but my own blunt, scruffy and ornery mood soon took over, so don’t blame him…

Neoliberalism’s Grand Achievement: 8 Families now own half of the Planet’s “wealth”

A concise, incomplete history of it’s ascendency:

• Sharing the wealth was invented to deal with uppity, but needed, unionized workers in the 20th century
• A phoney science called “economics” was born and nurtured
• They stumbled onto a flawed idea called “free” trade
• Corporations were soon made into “persons” with rights and the ability to live forever; that’s much longer than real persons live
• Those rights grew and grew as worker’s power shrank
• Human rights, such as clean water, became “commodities” – sold at a positively pornographic price in some places
• Market “freedom” inevitably led to privatization: fewer and richer Rich vs more and poorer Poor
• Entertainment and gadgetry kept the middle class distracted – a worthy crowd control project presented to government/corporate/labour think tanks in the 70’s
• Monopolies were made legal instead of criminal
• Unemployment Insurance was euphemized Employment Insurance in Canada
• Companies were allowed to use their employees’ pension savings, including the workers’ own contributions leaving just a bunch of promised numbers in the safe
• Banks were allowed play with insurance and sell mutual funds
• Crazy shit like derivatives became a way for the banks to get richer – until they didn’t
• Your taxes and mine went to bail out poorly managed banks and their overpaid executives
• Car companies were bailed out even though they broke their pension promises
• Private equity firm(s) gobbled up peoples’ houses at auctions as if they’d planned it.
• “Disaster Capitalism” took control of natural and organized disasters
• Little wealth was created, just redistributed upward
• The good freedoms of the many (association, speech…) were replaced by freedoms of the few (monopoly, price gauging, foreclosure…)
• Human beings are now just another “commodity” to those above eight families.

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Internet Kudos and Bozos in Sicily & Malta

This is a random post just because, exhausted after two great but hectic weeks, I feel like it:

Three places that stood out regarding Internet friendliness and simplicity during three-night stays this month:

Great:

Maison Ortigia in Siracusa, Sicily

Radisson Blu near Valletta, Malta

Bad:

Best Western  Ai Cavalieri Hotel in Palermo, Sicily

Despicably bad reception in the hotel’s new section, but the staff will keep you in the dark for days playing with a plethora of passwords.

There, I’ve got that off my chest.

 

 

 

 

Wine Making With Aretha Franklin

“So,” I’m going through a set of challenging wine-making instructions for a high quality Negroamaro (juice plus skins – a first for me).

I had to edit and translate them into hand-written, clear Binglish (Bob-friendly English) and decided to come to grips with the spelling and pronunciation of the following additive:

kieselsol

The incredibly helpful and generous person I buy my juice from, Joe, has as much fun pronouncing it as I do, but he sure knows how to make wine!

The word “kieselsol” wouldn’t stay in my septuagenarian, but fussy, brain, so I took time to look at it carefully. The first part, keisel, I thought must rhyme with Diesel and it did! The sol part, for a maternal anglo like me, is easy: Saul, like the biblical king.

But, if you want to be absolut richtig and use the handsome German pronunciation, just think Diesel-Soul – as in Aretha Franklin, RIP. I will call kieselsol “Diesel-Soul” from now on. And I will replace some of my cuss words with it.

I may even make it a mantra…

Will Ontarians NOW Get That FPTP Stinks?

Premier Doug Ford (eeewwww….) can destroy what he wants in Ontario for a minimum of four years, and this tragic development is Ontarians’ (and Canadians’) own fault for being among the very few places on Earth that still use a neanderthal, First Past The Post electoral system.

Now I’m going to gargle and brush my teeth….

Four Photos – A “Guide Map”

Courtesy of @ArtPicsChannel

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

Vincent Van Gogh

 

I am going to try to spend much less time on exposing what I consider to be the crimes of our wealth-dominated Mother Earth. It is starting to take over way too much of my life and is having no noticeable effect other than to piss off the majority of those close to me.

I will be able to spend much more of my time time on  family, musical performance, visiting the sick and imprisoned, reading and tai chi.

But, before metamorphosis takes over,

You Asked “Why Can’t We All Go Home?”

In presenting Vladímir Putin’s 21st Century equivalent to Khruschev’s “We will bury you.” the CBC last night failed to read Putin’s macho but desperate attempt to show the whole world that no one, not even the US, can come out of  a nuclear war unscathed.

Our CBC only approximated fairness last night. Still the same, implied, refrain meant to be innately picked up by couch potato feelers:

“See? Putin is, as we said, ruthlessly scary etc.” A deliberate misread, in my opinion.

The real NATO threat that has forced Russia’s hand: America’s broken promise not to expand NATO Eastward beyond Germany, made to Eduard Shevardnadze by James Baker in 1990 and illustrated by this brilliantly sarcastic image:

The answer to a friend’s worthwhile tweet question “Can’t we all just go home and respect others’ need for security?” is, I believe, in Simon and Garfunkel’s “people talking w/o speaking” (the weaponized mainstream media) and, since 2001, largely for profit FBI and CIA: the “Neon god they made.”

Disturbed’s inspired, intensely visual, version of Simon and Garfunkel’s amazingly prescient (so clearly now) The Sound of Silence…

And the original by Simon and Garfunkel… with high praise for their poetic insight.

O Canada – A 2017 Re-post

Note today: As the 150th Anniversary of Canada’s Confederation approaches, a re-post of the 2012 blog entry seems worthwhile. Canada’s House of Commons has approved a rather awkward-sounding tinkering with the English version to change “True patriot love in all our sons command” to “True patriot love in all of us command” but the senate hasn’t yet confirmed the change. Time we stopped tinkering… This version has been in my head and written down for almost a decade now. I think it deals with several genuine issues, including the above one about gender, but may be a little controversial. My vision is of a version such as this being sung everywhere, in verbal unison, by all people in Canada – including our First Nations.

We must remember, with respect and sensitivity, that this beautiful, shared land did not suddenly rise from the sea in the 16th century.

So here goes the original 2012 post:

O Canada, terre si belle, si grande

We pledge our love from cliffs to surging sand

Car nos bras saient porter l’épée, nous savons protéger la paix

Notre sagesse dès milliers d’années donne à tout ce qui vit respect

Pure prairie skies, tundra and tree

O Canada we stand on guard for Thee

O Canada we stand on guard for Thee.

 This single version, using both official languages, has been floating around in my mind  for a few years. For me it expresses my dream for a Canada that we can work towards building.

A Canada that believes in peace keeping and not in gratuitous wars that make the world less stable.

A Canada that respects, because of the influence of our native peoples, all forms of sentient life with whom we share the richness of our air, water and earth.

Your input is welcome.

Happy Canada Day!

Joyeuse Fête du Canada!

New Clothes for the Emperors

Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, in his 2017 budget, appears to be in the process of selling what seems, to an unapologetic sixties leftist like me, every remaining good thing in that province to private corporations.

Naomi Klein’s prescient book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, would shed some keen insight on this, unfortunately worldwide, trend. And the seismic shift in Saskatchewan, and possibly soon in Ontario, has happened on our watch!

As for Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, more hurt than help here, appears keen not only to leave all of Harper’s anti-democratic buckshot legislation, squirrelled away in over a dozen omnibus bills, in place, but more than that, to contribute his own pro-corporate slavish sauce to the mix. At this very moment Trudeau’s trying to figure out how to slyly dress his cabinet to keep the alt-right from going with someone like Kevin O’Leary.

The clothes of the Emperor (the proper name for any Prime Minister or Premier with a majority) are all but gone, and so many of his promises are in tatters, but he cuts a dashing figure in boxing trunks, doesn’t he?

Pierre must be spinning, and, simultaneously shrugging, in his grave.

Our AFN and the Dakota Example

Love – Zaagidwin: The eagle that represents love because he has the strength to carry all the teachings. The eagle has the ability to fly highest and closest to the creator and also has the sight to see all the ways of being from great distances. The Eagle’s teaching of love can be found in the core of all teachings, therefore an eagle feather is considered the highest honour and a sacred gift.

An Ojibway elder I met during the early Idle no More protests said that Canada’s opposition to the rape of our environment would be enabled through the First Nations and International Law that protects their powerful communal rights. But many laws have been squirrelled into a dozen omnibus bills by our previous Conservative government. They have been left scattered there by Justin Trudeau, who increasingly appears to be an agent of darkness with a phoney aura of light. These laws and amendments have smoothed the path for foreign and domestic developers by removing strong environmental laws that slowed down projects. They also foster the removal of sacred communal rights

North Dakota Fascism – A Wake-Up Call?

Bleakness abounds. Politicians with considerable power turn away. Mammon rules with asymptotically growing crudity, cruelty and excess, even without Trump in “power.” No big surprise that American “democracy” is a crock if one’s eyes are truly open to HRC’s portrayal by Wikileaks. We have learned nothing from the fascism of the past and, ironically, we minions who have benefitted from neocolonial atrocities committed upon others around the globe for over a century will, in turn, be ground under.

So wrong on so many levels.

And, President-Elect Trump, the idea of Greatness in the old-fashioned, Roman sense of economic growth and world dominance, is meaningless. In a finite biosphere, growth, as we have known it, is unsustainable. Get over it.

It is time for a Damascene Conversion.

True greatness