I’ve learned how to be vindicated in initiating an unjustified war that causes mass destruction and death. It involves convincing John Gormley that you’re eloquent when you can’t speak publicly without confusing “universality” with “university”, and getting intimate with a Saskatoon crowd that has paid big money to see you.
So if you need to commit a war crime, just clear it with wealthy conservative Saskatoonians who get their information from Fox News, and John Gormley, and you’re “vindicated” if you can get the RCMP to protect you instead of enforcing the laws of Canada.
While I’ve not read anything by Chomsky, and have listened to Gormley for years off an on, I think there’s no doubt who the finer political thinker and commentator is. Here’s an amusing “Letter to the Editor” on the subject, by Kelly Patrick of Saskatoon.
Here is the letter I sent regarding this morning’s comment by local talk show host. This all began with the fact George W Bush will be giving a mangled attempt of posterity here in Saskatoon October 21. Opposition to Bush began a debate which raged on talk radio with John Gormley, the radio host, espousing he is more politically astute than Noam Chomsky:
It’s a sad social and political commentary on our province when a single term MP and right wing talk show host can pronounce on air that he is more politically astute than Noam Chomsky (Sept 11 – John Gormley Show News Talk 650). I don’t want to get into an ideological war with Gormley because to me the left right debate offered by radio talk shows is for amateurs, buffoons and lazy citizens who take democracy for granted. They also tend to be less educated. Left right radio warfare is the stupid man’s way to end an argument before it even begins. The one who can shout the loudest and say the meanest things wins. That’s why negative television ads win votes. The ignorant and lazy don’t want to be educated they just want to hang out with the meanest dude.
Let’s compare the two at the heart of this debate. On his employee’s website the following explains John Gormley’s supposed political astuteness: John is a lawyer, a former Conservative Party Member of Parliament, a self described political junkie, proud father and defender of Saskatchewan.
Noam Chomsky, on the other hand, has written over 100 books ranging from Linguistics to the Common Good. Since 1955, he has taught at MIT, to those at Rawlco that would be the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during 1980–92 and was the eighth most-cited source. He is also considered a prominent cultural figure. Here are some Chomsky quotes:
“Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.
Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Overheard on the John Gormley Show by its host John Gormley:
“My God Sarah Palin is refreshing”.
“The left are nothing but a bunch of tree hugging, granola eating lunatics!”
Here’s some good news for Canadian travelers. Now you not only get to fear that a nutjob border guard from Homeland Insecurity will pull a gun on you, you also can worry if the Canadian customs official is going to decide you’re a threat to national security or maybe just evading taxes. “Do you have anything to declare, and stick’em’up!”
Instead the idiots are too busy telling you to take your shoes off in front of a metal detector ONLY if you’re flying to the United States where they care about “security”. They apparently don’t care if you blow up in Canada, of course, because we know how often someone gets a bomb on a plane in their shoes (Answer:never). Yes, the US is security conscious. They’re conscious that there’s a concept of security, but are a little uncertain as to the details of how to implement it. It starts with taking off your shoes when a Canadian uniformed guard tells you to, apparently. It ends when people think it’s normal not to take water and shoes onto an airplane.
This isn’t quite newsworthy, but is worth a laugh I suppose. Leftdog doesn’t like the Saskatchewan Liberal Party. Commenter foudroyaume sent this along to me, since there was[?]/is a delay in it being published in Leftdog’s moderated comments.
[The Sask Liberals] will be lucky to win one seat in 2011.
However, I’m not sure you’re following things, but the NDP’s membership is a quarter of the size it was ten years ago, and half the current membership vehemently hates the new leader. Meanwhile, their strange ideology of government-owned everything is losing currency around the globe. Even the Swedes are rethinking things.
I expect as many Dippers to move to the Greens as Cons are going to move to the Liberals over the next two elections. Also, since Calvert went against his ideology and lowered oil royalties, we have had a boom in SK that has brought back a lot of liberal-minded people who left because of the excessive governance here. That’s a demographic which will only grow with the province.
Add to this the oratorical skills and personal charisma of [Ryan] Bater. A lot of heads are going to turn as soon as he gets a chance to openly debate Wall & Lingenfelter.
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Something that is more newsworthy, pointed out by Buckdog Blog, is that the fanatical, war criminal torturer, George W. Bush, is coming to Saskatoon. If it were my city, I’d be out protesting the fact that the RCMP are failing to enforce Canada’s immigration law that prohibits people who have overthrown sovereign nations, from visiting our country.
Omar explains why the RCMP may be standing down, and failing to enforce Canada’s law. It could be because the USA essentially writes global law, including who it can unilaterally decide to invade, even the Netherlands if Bush were arrested and held for trial.
Here’s an interesting comparison of the Bush/Cheney torturers, to the Nazi Gestapo. Note that the convicted Nazis were executed, with the blessing of the United States. We’ve fallen a long way in 60 years.
If the United States is a country “at war”, then why aren’t these “war crimes”? Why isn’t Canada arresting the war criminal Bush, when he’s visited our country. He’s coming again, and still our RCMP do nothing to uphold our Immigration Act.
This is a really interesting article. You have to admit that it’s a scary thing to think about… that our democratic leaders (and not-so-democratic ones around the world) are beholden to rich string-pullers who really call all of the shots. When a financial crisis hits, it still comes down to which rich people aren’t connected enough to go down right away with the government in charge, will survive to rule the next day.
The downward spiral that follows is remarkably steep. Enormous companies teeter on the brink of default, and the local banks that have lent to them collapse. Yesterday’s “public-private partnerships” [P3s] are relabeled “crony capitalism.” With credit unavailable, economic paralysis ensues, and conditions just get worse and worse. The government is forced to draw down its foreign-currency reserves to pay for imports, service debt, and cover private losses. But these reserves will eventually run out. If the country cannot right itself before that happens, it will default on its sovereign debt and become an economic pariah. The government, in its race to stop the bleeding, will typically need to wipe out some of the national champions—now hemorrhaging cash—and usually restructure a banking system that’s gone badly out of balance. It will, in other words, need to squeeze at least some of its oligarchs.
Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique—the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large. […]
It’s not such a stretch. The Conservatives come to power in Canada, while there are massive tax breaks to the oil industry. Financial meltdown hits, and suddenly oil is through the floor, and there’s a power grab in the Liberal party, and rumours of unhappy Conservatives looking for a new leader too.
And I wonder if it was coincidence that markets collapsed just prior to the big Bush trade out? How does that factor into the oligarchy’s power struggle? There may have been some advantage to it happening under Bush’s watch at least before he shoved over, so it could be said Obama is blameless if things continue like they are. With the way Obama is spending with Congress, it seems unlikely that he’s the one to lead the working class out of oppression.
My ProgressiveBloggers.ca compatriots feel a lot like I do about this situation the Harper government has created. The government is a bunch of flaming hypocrites in light of the recent Bush visit to Calgary.
“He has expressed sympathy for the Taliban murderers who are trying to kill Canadian and British soldiers in Afghanistan.
“This is not someone who we believe we should be giving special treatment in terms of allowing them access to our country. Mr Galloway has said he wants to come to Canada to raise money for these groups that are out there killing Canadians.
“It is actually quite odious and I think it is entirely appropriate for our security agencies to say that if they have advanced notice that Mr Galloway is going to come to Canada to pee on our carpet, that we should deny him entry to the home.
[…]
The act states: “A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on security grounds for:
(a) engaging in an act of espionage or an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada;
(b) engaging in or instigating the subversion by force of any government;
(c) engaging in terrorism;
(d) being a danger to the security of Canada;
(e) engaging in acts of violence that would or might endanger the lives or safety of persons in Canada; or
(f) being a member of an organisation that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages, has engaged or will engage in acts referred to in paragraph (a), (b) or (c).”
Bush is known to have instigated the subversion of the sovereign state of Iraq. Minister Kenney has attended a rally with possible terrorist organizers.
More at the BBC. Oh yeah, Canada’s “back” alright.
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Hat tips to L-Girl, Tyler, and Sudbury.
It’s been a long standing Canadian tradition, that if you want to get really big as an entertainer in Canada, you have to make at least one hit in the States. Because, if the Americans notice, there must be something impressive that we Canadians missed before if we’re taking a second look/listen. Bare Naked Ladies were famous in Canada before their 1998 breakthrough “One Week” in the USA. Now they are missing their famous lead singer, Page, of that hit and most of their songs from the last two decades.
Can you hear that noise? That’s the building sound of right-wing blowhard talking heads on CNN and Fox denouncing Obama for having a half brother he’s barely met who possessed a single marijuana joint on the other side of the globe.
I can only imagine the kind of garbage on TV and talk radio right now about this, so I’m not turning them on. How would Bush be treated if a brother of his was caught with pot? Not very well. How about Clinton if his sibling was? Not very well either. And that’s the fault of the media for trying to pander to vultures who like to read about their political leaders’ families having a tough time with the law.
And that’s part of why I wrote this, because I know people want to hear this news, even though it’s meaningless. It’s meaningless, except in the context that the world makes marijuana illegal, but most states make money from cigarettes which are much more dangerous and harmful. The worst thing about this story is that is shouldn’t be a story at all. Imagine the headline, “President’s half brother caught smoking cigarette”.
Redstate (http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2009/01/19/farewell-to-bush-mission-accomplished/) wallows in the defeat of their idol, George Bush, giving him a “Mission Accomplished” send off. They seem to miss the irony in using “Mission Accomplished” to describe Bush’s presidency as any kind of a success. The very phrase is a pop culture joke for something that is far from successful or finished despite proclamations to the contrary.
They don’t accept open comments without registration (for obvious reasons), so here’s my response to their commenting terms “Be respectful, or be banned.”:
Good thing “frothy left” is a respectful way to talk about people who care more about peace and justice than they do to paying lip service to a man they don’t respect.
Progressives, centrists, even moderate conservatives may have a lot of bitterness and cynicism built up after the last 8 or more years. I don’t expect everyone to get along too well overnight, but there is a possibility that intellectualism, and honesty will become honoured traits not only in our leaders, but also ourselves very soon. Hug a smart person today. Read a book. Find a blog of a bitter political rival, and resist the urge to call them rude names, when you can simply let the parody write itself. If there’s one thing that Bush can take credit for, it’s for making parody so easy, anyone can do it at home, even Republican bloggers.
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff Archives 2006-2009 