Why is the US threatening Korea? It is obviously not any kind of danger, regardless of US pronouncements to the contrary - much like their professed 'fear" of Iraq. No, I think it's just bullyism, for lack of a better word - they can kick ass, they like to kick ass, and by fuck they're gonna kick ass - all good Texans are like that, not to mention many others. There's lots of kids on the block, but it would be dangerous to go after a lot of them, because even though the US is undoubtedly bigger and tougher in the long run, these other kids are pretty tough and brave too, and would get some good licks in one way or another - might even get together with others and (shudder) give the bully a good pounding. So - much better to pick on someone very much NOT their own size. Like Yugoslavia, like Afghanistan (poorest, weakest country in the world, by most statistical accounts, when they went after it), Iraq - and now North Korea, and places like Liberia and Cuba are on the list. Despicable hardly covers the situation. And it is not a whole lot less despicable for US (as in WE Canadians) - the Canadian government - to stand back with hardly a word of protest while the street bully goes around pounding others. And not that bright either, if there is some kind of thought going around, as there evidently is in some policy circles, that our "safety" lies in sucking up to the bully as much as possible - the reaction of cowards from the earliest days is just the same, try to suck up to the bully so the bully won't go after them. It never has worked, and never will (for some reason the name Chamberlain comes again to mind, for those who learned a bit of history). And, in the bigger sense, it is a stupid idea - when the US (not if - when - it is as inevitable as the sun rising and the death of the oceans now appears to be) they decide to come after us for some real or imaginary slight, or just for the hell of it - well, like old Rev Neimuller, who ignored the cries of the others - anyone who might have helped us will be gone under already, with US-compliant puppet governments installed - and the other, bigger kids on the block will have written us off as voluntary US vassals, not worth endangering the security of their own countries over - they will fight when attacked, unlike others less able, but are not going to go to the defence of someone who had demonstrated the lack of courage to stand up to the bully that we have - for the simple reason that we cannot be trusted - even if they did come to our assistance, there would be no reason to suspect that within a short period of time we would not once again be sucking up to the US - our so-called leaders have demonstrated time and time again that that is their desire - and the other big kids on the block don't have much use for either cowards or sycophants.

(The coincidence file!! - or serendipity - there is a tide in the affairs of men!! - the next morning after writing that, this - A failed system's failed promises By Stephen Gowans, whom has been mentioned before, a great Canadian writer (which is why you have NEVER seen him in the Pispot or any of the other amazingly "liberal" Canadian media (sorry - got ahead of myself - that's later!) - anyway, the whole thing is another good read, but he has this to say in part about Korea -

"The idea that North Korea is a threat to the United States is about as believable as the idea that a a colony of ants is a threat to the elephant whose foot hovers three inches over its hill. North Korea hasn't a single solider stationed outside its borders. Washington, on the other hand, has 37,000 troops deployed, on, or near, the North Korean border, 65,000 troops stationed in nearby Japan, the Seventh Fleet lurking in nearby waters, and bombers within striking distance. It has dismissed Pyongyang's pleas to sign a nonaggression treaty, declaring bizarrely that it will not succumb to blackmail. And what has North Korea done to threaten the US (or to blackmail the country)? It has fired up a mothballed nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons grade material, and withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), but only after Washington reneged on an agreement to build light water reactors and provide fuel oil shipments. And only after Washington issued a virtual declaration of war, designating North Korea part of "an axis of evil.....Could a North Korea with one or two crude nuclear bombs pose much of a threat to a US poised to strike with overwhelming force? Quite the other way around. Indeed, North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons can be said to be a rational response to an overwhelming threat by the US. And there have been plenty of signs that the threat is real."

It may not be too late to salvage something here for Canadians and our place in a free world rather than the pathetic little grovelling servant to the hated tyrant - but it would take serious action pretty soon, and it does not appear to be anywhere near on the horizon, with America and "free trade" loving Paul Martin heading for 24 Sussex.

I would advise one and all to book your tickets for somewhere NOT next door to your next dictator. But it is, of course, up to you.

As TS said - "not with a bang, but a whimper".

Brief comment (yea I bet) on one from last time, about so-called gay marriages - one would have hoped to avoid this entirely in the future as there are many more important thing to be looking at, but some things are too idiotic to avoid or let pass without comment (one of the favorite tricks of the neocons - push people way past their limit of tolerance on something so they just give up, and then say "Look! Everyone agrees because they're not protesting!!") - like this - Aussie PM nixes gay unions [[ RM archive copy]] - wherein Australian PM Howard, who is proving over and over again the old truth that sycophants of the brainless are even stupider than their masters - here he says (I quote, I would not, could not make this shit up) -

"...It's a bedrock institution," he said. "You're talking here about the survival of the species" and .... marriage was the vehicle for "providing the most secure environment" for raising the next generation..."

- well, actually, really, one is almost speechless - as they say, a little education can be a dangerous thing, and here we have proof in spades. One would hardly dare ask such a mind as this how the fuck the species managed to survive for the millions of years before this great institution of marriage ever came along? - but of course, there are many things in society, for instance, that do not make sense to me (or others, lest you think I'm being a bit pretentious here - people like Martin Luther King, for instance, couldn't understand racism so much that he spent his life fighting it, and was killed for his inability to understand what most people took for granted - Gandhi the same - many others. But I digress). I wouldn't want to try to make any cause-effect relationship, as many other factors are involved, and marriage probably incidental, but it has only been since the onset of "civilisation", and its many primarily religious superstitions like marriage, that the human race has seriously been working at DESTROYING the fucking planet or at least making it uninhabitable for most living creatures, and we are getting pretty close to accomplishing that goal - so for this halfwit to say that marriage is necessary for the "survival of the species" is idiocy (seem to be using that word a lot lately - but it happens to be the most appropriate) of the first order, on many levels. But out of the mouths of idiots - what would you expect? HEY!! - maybe he means, by "survival of the species" - the species of idiots (of which he is of course a high-ranking member - and not overlooking the fact that whether or not it has anything to do with marriage, the human species is WAAAAYYYYYYY over the carrying capacity of its home, and anything we could do to DROP the fucking birth rate would be a GREAT fucking idea?!?!) --- Do you suppose that is a new kind of neoidiot code he's gotten a secret book on and understood a bit of? HAHAHAHAHA - another clue Watson!!!

- more later, after a pipe or two - this may be a two-pipe problem....

- wait - forgot to mention the bit about the "most secure environment..." - more neocon shit, one of those motherhood lies that has become "non-mentionable" in polite society (usually this non-mentionability is a clue to something seriously bad being done by someone to we lesser types - this is a case) - certainly the love and attention of parents is important to any kid - but to say the nuclear family (I wonder if George's is a nucular family? I expect so - one that had a meltdown some time ago, though...) - anyway - shouldn't make jokes about dysfunctional children or their families, I know... - but this bit about the nuclear family being the best way to raise kids falls at the very least is questionable, if not outright nonsense, on many levels. For instance - we all know the divorce rate in western society, approaching 50% in a lot of places, and having children come from this sort of environment is NOT good for them, in many ways. Also, when we very much isolate poor people and their families, as we do at least in North America, with a 20% poverty rate among children, and a lot more not far above it - well, what the hell is good about being raised in poverty??? absolutely fucking nothing, I assure you - most poor children get a poor start in life, poor nutrition leading to poor health and poor brain development, poor opportunities after that for getting into university, both because of low marks and no fucking money, etc and etc - where's the nuclear family here, and what good is it doing when there is only one parent (yes, I know the argument that most poor kids are the product of single mothers - and that is exactly why some other form of family relationship would be better for them - read on MacDuff!!!).

Many societies, currently and throughout history, have practiced an extended family model, where there are and were several generations of people sharing the same space, be it a cave or grass hut or whatever, where the kids were given almost constant love and attention from people they knew and loved and trusted (no not perfect - fuckups of one sort or another undoubtedly occurred - but generally!!) - far more security for them, and also an introduction into their society, and how people behaved in that society, and how they were expected to behave to contribute to the group survival - a very natural process for all - it is primarily in the recent western generations we have gotten away from that and now treat the so-called nuclear family as some kind of ideal (which it assuredly is not) - and of course there are reasons for this, very few things happen by accident - reasons based in the capitalistic exploitation of people for their labour (HOLY FUCK MA HE JUST WENT MARXIST AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!) - hang on hang on - it happens to be fucking true!!, and a bit of thought will make it evident, like most true things that have been hidden or unknown or avoided for some reason (Santa anyone?), the first shocking light cast on something is always disconcerting, but you quickly accept the rather undeniable evidence, and can even take some pleasure in your newfound wisdom! - poor people, forced into "nuclear families" where they sink or swim on their own, with little or no social support system, forced into the capitalist sweat shops to feed their families - and then the men so fucking resentful of being forced to work like slaves beating their wives and kids - just fucking great for society, man. Just fucking great. But it is a necessary condition for capitalism to work - divide and conquer. Isolate people as much as possible - there are only a (relatively) few elite, and many, many poor - a necessary condition for capitalism (or any form of exploitation, call it what you will) to work for the exploiters is that the exploited be prevented from getting together, getting organised in a way that will dethrone the elite. Nuclear families are a great deal easier to control and isolate than any form of community family. Poor nuclear families, forced to devote most of their time simply to finding enough food to feed themselves and their children more so. (interesting that this kind of thing developed in northern countries, where shelter and heat are necessary in the long, cold winter months - once the land was enclosed and "rent" required for shelter, another heavy stick was added to the equation. (not that anyone here would ever bring up that damned 'conspiracy" word, when words like "coincidence" are available!!!)

And I wonder why you never, ever get told stuff like that in school!?? - well, of course, anybody like a teacher even thinking such stuff (how in the fuck did YOU get through teacher's college kid? holy fuck they're supposed to get rid of that stuff first year!!) would find themselves incommunicado in a little white room in short order, getting "nice" medicine from the "nice" doctors, and soon would be feeling ever so much better!! - without all them silly thoughts in your head - excuse me doctor, what thoughts were those again...???

hahaha

Man isn't it just fucking amazing where some things take you.

We were going to start with the story about the guy who got put in jail for 18 months for writing some letter, before PM (would that stand for Prime Mushroomhead, all input-output lines of the brain firmly anchored in horseshit, as are most of his neocon compadres?) Howard distracted us. So let's see where it is - ok - we got Unrepentant letter writer handed record sentence for hatred and Man Charged With Hate Crime Offences for a bit of background, and of course [[RM archive copy]] - and for some fucking reason, not another word in another Canadian paper - I ran across the story by accident at a site called Rense - Canada 'Hate Crime' Earns Record Jail Time - who is a bit far out at times with UFOs and such stuff - not saying he's wrong, or anything, I expect there is something to a lot of what he says, it just ain't my bag at this time, as the saying goes - but he also has quite a bit of stuff I do find interesting (I know a lot of people who figure anyone who believes that horrible terrorist Osama and his horrible terrorist group Al Qaeda didn't single-handedly steal all those planes and shut down the entire American air defense system for two hours and drive them into the World Trade Center is crazy too - all where you draw the line, I guess) - anyway, as I was saying, a guy getting 18 months in jail for writing some letters, and none of the mainstream Canadian media see fit to publish anything about it (at least on their web sites, which is all I have access to) - well, to me, that says quite a lot about quite a lot of things (oh fuck here he goes....!)

First the "crime" - I quote - ".....promoting hatred against minorities.... communicated in numerous hate-filled letters to politicians, the national director of a Holocaust studies group and even York Region's police chief... often consist(ing) of newspaper clippings to which Mr. Love added his own commentary....," Overall, according to the paper, "Mr. Love pleaded guilty to 20 counts of willfully promoting hatred; one count of criminal harassment, two counts of sending scurrilous material through the mail and one count of possession of a weapon dangerous to the public."

One thing that kind of stuck out about the whole story was that while they did a LOT of talking about how fucking horrible this guy's letters and so on were, they never gave any examples, not even some watered down stuff, or some "...I think J*** are f**** a****..." expletive deleted stuff, so we might have at least some idea of what was being said by this guy that got him 20 fucking months in the slammer. "Offensive to the public"? Well, really - there are no apparent limits to the **REAL** violence that can be shown on the news, or tv shows, or pics in the papers (check out little Ali off the side there - and that is FAR from the most obscene stuff available - thing is, of course, I guess, the people who did that to Ali are fucking heroes (at least in the minds of the same people prosecuting this Love guy - no Chretien didn't follow the Americans to Iraq, but most everyone whose opinion got into the papers from the "justice" community and media in Canada was all gung ho for it, and I don't hear any voices saying they should be prosecuted for war crimes (from them - you can figure if RM was in the prosecutor's office there'd be summonses flying all over the fucking world) or exposing the Canadian public to dangerous ideas - fuck I better not get off on that right now) - I can't figure if they want people to police themselves now (well - they haven't said exactly what does get you 20 months in jail, so if you want to stay "free" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) I guess you better not write anything at all that someone might not like..... ("Roger!! You MUSTN'T send that to the MP!!!! - it MIGHT be hate mail!!!") - or if they know good and fucking well that anybody who read it would think it might be a bit objectionable, but 20 months?!?!?! GET SERIOUS YOU GUYS!! - actually, I guess that's the problem - they are getting far far far too fucking serious.

Remember the guy in BC who lost his job a few years ago because some female student THOUGHT he was looking at her while she was swimming? Or the lady prof, some feminist type already disliked by the "powers" who dared say, after 911, that JUST MAYBE the activities of the Americans all over the world the last few decades were somehow related to the attack - and the establishment went ballistic? Fuck it's insane.

(Quoting again:) "...Ms Klukach [co-prosecutor] also highlighted the "psychological terrorism" Mr. Love's propaganda campaign helped create.... "It has a menacing, quasi-violent dimension to it," she said...."

- again, innuendo, and now bringing into the picture the new bogeyman of **TERRORISM!!!** - and by fuck ANYBODY accused of **TERRORISM*** can be dumped into the deepest cell for the longest time!! BADBADBAD!!!! - DON'T THINK JUST REACT!!! etc and fucking etc.

But she or they won't tell us what it was he said that was so "hateful" (man that is a hateful word to be using on anyone) - so what are we supposed to figure from it?

PC (not your political party, although it is obviously a political movement - one of the worst sort, really, acting behind the scenes, demanding self-policing, and that all citizens control their neighbours as well in the "accepted" ways - thought crimes are on the list, and it is also a major community-breaker - who can you trust, if your neighbours are going to squeal on you if you wear the wrong kind of shoes some day?!?!) is one of the most dangerous things going on in our society the last few years. Truly a totalitarian movement, allowing for NO disagreement with their dictates - the very worst sort of fascism (hmm - does that make sense? are some sorts of fascism better than others? - NOT a facetious question - as the good Rev Neimuller eventually found out - think about it!!!)

There are much bigger questions associated with this as well. Who actually decides what is "hate mail" or "hate speech"? - that is to say, apparently it is ok now to hate, shall we say, Osama and Saddam and I guess Kim Jong, and any of their families and followers, and fucking kill them too, no courts or trials necessary - so apparently *all* "hate" isn't bad (I guess it's kind of like terrorism in that regard - when "we" drop bombs and blow the arms of kids like Ali and terrorize the fuck out of everyone in the country that they might be next - well, we're doing it, so it's just fucking fine - but if "they" fucking DARE to kill any of OUR people, in any way - why, that's terrorism!! - got that kids? Make sense? Sure it does!! Rich white folks GOOD!!! little coloured people BAD! YEAYAYAYAY DEMOCRACY!!! We kill - GOOD WE HEROES!!! They kill - TERRORISM GO BALLISTIC!!!) Not that most citizens get into this stuff, until the government and media and so on want you on board for some reason so start publicising it - but it wasn't that many years ago that both Osama and Saddam were, if not actually *really* good guys, at least our "allies", so even if they killed some people and did some bad stuff, there was no need to get too serious about any criticism or talk about it much in the media.

The Judge also said - "You used your intellect in a way that was as negative as possible and could well have a ripple effect that could be catastrophic in many communities," the judge said in passing sentence." - that is an interesting statement, if you think about it even a bit - he is saying that everyone, or at least a significant number of people, in the communities he knows is so fucking stupid they will believe any stupid thing any idiot tells them and thus start acting badly (well - what other "catastrophic effect" could he be talking about?) - it would have been really nice if some reporter had of asked him if that was what he really believed (take a second and go through the followup questions to either "yes" or "no" answers - but more importantly the "no" answer which he would have to give - if people are not that stupid, then why do they need to be "protected" from stupid people saying stupid things? (fuck I gotta look into this - maybe the same judge will put the Pispot in jail for 18 months - they say more stupid stuff in a day than this guy did in months!) - anyway, crossing the line JUST a bit into facetious there hahaha - but why does this judge (and apparently a significant part of the Canadian "justice" system) believe that people in Canada are so suggestible that they need to be protected from what they hear or read? And how does that relate to the idiotic things that appear on the television that most people watch 4.54 hours per day, every day, and more on the weekend? Or is this again something that WE can do but not anyone else - i.e. when the Canadian people, who have been trained to be susceptible to all kinds of stupidity from the tv, are told over and over again stuff like "lower taxes is good lower taxes lower taxes.." and shit like that on the tv, it's just fine for them to be susceptible because, after all, that's the way we trained them!! - but WAIT JUST A FUCKING MINUTE ANYONE ELSE TRYING TO FUCK WITH OUR TRAINED MINDS!!! - I don't know - makes sense in a perverse sort of way.....

But more to the point - at what point in time did this judge, or the prosecutor, or anyone else who runs around screaming about "hate" this or "hate" that become the arbiters of what is acceptable for you or me or anyone else to read or hear? I find it highly fucking insulting, just for starters, that someone out there says THEY are ok to see this stuff "distasteful" as it may be - but most people mustn't !!

And then I have to think - just what kind of society are these people promoting, and exactly why shouldn't ALL of us be involved in the discussion? At no time in my life was I ever given a vote or a choice about whether or not I wanted to live in a society where other people could decide what was appropriate for me to read or hear or see - and I expect for pretty good reason - anybody promoting that sort of shit could probably expect less votes than the fucking Green party got last time, and they fucking well know it. So like many things (raising salaries for MPs for instance) this kind of thing is NEVER mentioned in election campaigns, but brought up (pun alert!!) later. Imagine for instance - "Hi! I'm your bright cheery political candidate! I do hope you elect me, because I am just so fucking much smarter than you, that when I get elected I am going to pass some laws so I can get to choose what is good for you to read, and what things you shouldn't read!...." - one suspects that person would not get an overwhelming number of votes. Of course, one has been surprised at these things before.

But some more questions - like exactly where is the line, according to these people? That is (let's use some group that almost everyone holds in low esteem for our examples, to avoid offending too many people - lawyers, or politicians, or something) - for example, if I were to say, "I don't like most lawyers..." - would that be ok? What about "Most lawyers are thieves, as near as I can figure.." - ok? Over the line? What about - "Lawyers are all assholes..." - ok? Not ok? And, of course, there are a million or more permutations to be added - what about sarcasm, for instance - I might say "All lawyers are just WONDERFUL people..." - but when I spoke it, my voice would be dripping with sarcasm, so it was very obvious that I had a very low opinion of most lawyers - probably it would sound very "hateful" to most lawyers - would that get me - what? slap on the wrist? 2 months? 20 months? fine big or small? - what??? - and how would I know what the limits were before I spoke - isn't that part of a "fair" judicial system, that people KNOW what is illegal and what is not (not even getting into the question of whether or not they agree with it), and what the general range of penalties are for various things, in black and white, so they will KNOW if they are breaking the law at any given time, and what punishment they are facing for their intentional transgression??

I guess not, though, in the Canadian judicial system - as far as can be determined, this Love guy didn't anticipate being charged with "hate" mail, for sending a few letters to some MPs giving his opinion about something. I guess he knows now, though, of course.

Scary as all fuck. And it wasn't in the papers. Not a word of outcry in the editorials or columnists.

(Oh - just for the sake of interest - I don't want to alienate absolutely EVERYONE!!! - I should point out that, as far as I can determine, I disagree with pretty much everything this Love guy was saying (hard to be sure, when they won't tell you what it was, except through innuendo - and when governments do this sort of thing, they usually want you to believe something that isn't actually true, but don't want to say something they can actually be accused of lying about) - but I do NOT believe the best way to deal with this kind of thing is to lock him or people like him up, or physically shut him up in any way at all! - I believe the best "defence" if you will against this kind of stuff is to have a decently educated citizenry, people who know that this kind of stuff is crap, and just tune out when the purveyors of such stuff turn on - they will wither away from their own lack of substance sooner rather than later, and with no need for us to do anything about it. As Voltaire said - "I may disagree vehemently with what you say - but I will defend to the death your right to say it." An immensely important principle in a Democracy. Of course, we don't actually have a "democracy" according to deeper rather than superficial definitions, which is one reason this whole thing is taking place. And one reason more people should be concerned about it all, if they would rather the democracy get stronger rather than weaker - stopping free speech is NOT making us stronger.)

Clean up the INBOX fer fuck's sake!!

- in Nova Scotia, the PCs won 25 of 52 seats with 36% of the vote; the NDP and Libs got about 31% and 15 and 12 seats respectively (Libs actually got a bit more of the vote, and 3 seats less!). And given something like a 63% turnout, that means Hamm is Premier with the support of something like 23% of the voting age people in the province - and one would figure somewhat less than than that of all people then in the province (it's interesting how they shut young people out of the voting - I suppose they figure that they aren't sufficiently well trained until they have jobs or something - blatant discrimination, and the shutting out of a very large segment of the population from the political process). I don't know why more people don't say something about this - either too cynical to give a fuck, I suppose, or maybe don't realise there are any options since the politicians and media don't want anyone thinking about it and most people think what we have is as good as it gets (very visible triumph of propaganda there!!). But our ridiculous electoral system is one of a number of reasons things are done in Canada (and the provinces) much more for the elite than for the people (all of the most progressive countries in the world, in terms of protecting and actually 'serving" the people, are to be found in Europe - where they have had PR for decades - no coincidence!!! - and also, of course, no coincidence that the capitalist elite in Canada and the US and Britain (the last 3 countries in the western world still operating under this old system) don't want the people thinking about it much, where cutting taxes is the big cry of the day, rather than Help the People!!), and if the people want change, then changing this electoral system is where it has to start. Many other changes need to be made as well as PR, of course, to ensure some kind of accountability and responsibility outside of being able to "toss the buggers" every few years if they get too much out of line - but PR would be a good start.


- Warren Kinsella, who seems like a nice family man at times but has a vicious tongue and is a bit of a federal Lib shill and pretty in-the-box, came up with this list of Ontario Tory accomplishments the last few years:

• cut Ministry of Environment staff, thereby leading to the Walkerton tragedy;
• fired 10,000 nurses;
• delisted health services;
• gave $100 million to a firm for a computer system that doesn't work;
• ordered the closure of child surgery programs, and emergency wards;
• wants to give big corporations $2.2 billion in a tax giveaway;
• brought in the private school tax credit;
• cut $2 billion from education;
• spent $300 million in tax dollars on partisan advertising;
• added $21 billion to the debt, and threw Ontario back into massive deficit;
• oversaw the largest pollution increase in North America;
• fired librarians and special ed teachers;
• built private hospitals;
• opposed Kyoto;
• broke the Taxpayer Protection Act;
• paid a press secretary $300,000 a year;
• called people who oppose the Iraq war "cowards";
• and, went on vacation when SARS broke out.