The Antisocial Socialist

 I don't post about the news much because it's overwhelming and there are smarter people saying smart things that I reblog elsewhere. Anyway.

Here in Canada we have a new Prime Minister, which is cool. It's not like I'm a big fan of Mark Carney but he's the person polls suggest can beat Poilievre, so this is good news. Poilievre is an outright fascist who has to go down and go down hard if we're going to survive the endless assaults on democracy and sovereignty coming from the US. Also, there is a delicious irony in the idea of the sensible banker who kept us from the worst of the 2008 economic crash defeating the guy who wants to replace our economy with bitcoin. Ultimately Canada is a fake colonialist country but the left is not really in a position to change that so we must make do. As I said in the other place, I would much rather protest Carney than have my right to protest banned under Poilievre.

Speaking of protesting, the Americans have recently disappeared a German tourist, a UK children's book publisher, and a pro-Palestinian graduate student with an American wife who's 8 months pregnant. The latter case is the most disturbing, as it's a direct result of Trump ordering the rounding up and deporting of Palestine solidarity activists. I know a lot of Jews who even now are more concerned about seeing a keffiyeh than the fact that literal seig-heiling Nazis are in charge of the US government, so I will draw everyone's attention to this article in the Forward that describes where the law that they're using to disappear people like Mahmoud Khalil came from. I think at the moment the majority of Jews in the diaspora are, by and large, misreading the point in the Niemöller poem that we're at, and if this isn't a wakeup call, I'm not sure what is.

Meanwhile Israel has just cut off Gaza's electricity. All reporting I can find is remarkably anodyne. "Trims" is one word I saw, which is a strange term for things like "now there's no potable water" or "life support in the shattered ruins of hospitals cut off again." 

And Ukraine. Fuck. I want to slap some of my fellow leftists stupidposting on Facebook but that's not the real enemy, is it? Little exposes the raw truth that international law is more of a polite suggestion more than the ability of one country to stroll into another and just take it, and the world's biggest economy handing it over on a silver platter to their fellow fascists.

I enjoy reading JD Vance's absolutely fake story about running into pro-Ukraine protestors who scared the 3-year-old human shield he was walking. Obviously people like that don't spend time with their offspring, or walking among the common man, so it is made up, but it just drives home the irony that exists at every level of reaction, this belief that "our" children must be insulated from learning uncomfortable truths while other people's children cower in makeshift shelters while the bombs go off.

It's hard to tell how much any of the horrors are penetrating people's consciousness. I mean, everyone I know is shit-scared all the time, but a significant number of "everyone I know" is queer and trans folks who've been sounding the alarm bells for years. I don't come off as shit-scared because my existence is one of perpetual anxiety and existential horror so I don't expect anything good to ever happen anyway. I was like that with covid until people stopped being afraid of covid and then—as now—I remain baffled as to what is wrong with people and why they can walk into a crowded room unmasked as if they're not risking permanent brain damage every single time.* I don't really have a barometer for how normal Americans react to things anymore, if there are even any normal Americans left.

What am I going to be doing, just blogging through the death throes of Western civilization? 

*And yet, I've done that a few times. Normalization is a powerful force, which is why our first priority needs to be to resist it.

 Taking a break from Ford's declaration of war against students and staff in all public schools (not, it must be noted, private schools, including St. Michael's where the Goatfucker went to school), Ford has not forgotten to fuck over a bunch of other people while he's at it.

See, awhile ago, there was a little crisis where fascists took over Ottawa for a month and blocked the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. Controversially, the federal government's response (after the municipal and provincial governments did nothing and/or encouraged the terrorists), was to invoke the Emergencies Act. I didn't agree with this decision but I understood the impulse to do so. These were bad people doing a bad thing. If the city or province had acted responsibly, the Emergencies Act wouldn't have been necessary, because the things they were doing, like harassment, assault, and attempted arson, were already illegal. I did feel that it was overreach, though less so than when Trudeau 1.0 used the Emergencies Act 1.0, a.k.a. the War Measures Act, to declare martial law in Quebec.

This time, the Emergencies Act let them remove the fascists and freeze the bank accounts of fascist sympathizers who donated. I'm generally in favour of fascists getting removed from places and having their bank accounts frozen, like, that to me is a good time, but something about it made me feel queasy. You see, while not a student of history as such, I am someone whose memory goes back farther than about 30 seconds, so I know that any authoritarian law, regardless of who it's currently targeting, will ultimately be employed against the left, racialized, and other marginalized people far more than it will be employed against fascists.

At least, though, the Emergencies Act is meant to be a temporary, last-minute solution to an urgent problem. Much like with the Notwithstanding Clause, it's kind of a "break glass in case of emergency"-type thing. Not permanent, right?

Enter Doug. Fucking. Ford.

You know, the premier of Ontario who did nothing while a major city in his province was occupied for a month and bridges were taken over. And oh yeah, his daughter was one of the terrorists. Never one to waste a good crisis, he has decided to make some of the powers in the Emergencies Act permanent. Of course, of course, it's called the Keeping Ontario Open for Business Act. And you can't do anything about it because he has a majority government.

And if you think that it's only going to be used against, say, terrorists like Krista Ford, I have a bridge to blockade (and then sell you). Nah, this is gonna be used when Indigenous protesters block a train or pipeline. That's what this is about.

Giving authoritarian governments extra powers is always a bad thing. Always always always.

Have a great Tuesday!

Thousands of people marched, drummed, and danced in the Cancel Canada Day march to demand justice for Indigenous children and survivors of Canada's genocidal residential schools.

It was powerful and beautiful and amazing. It was also, on a personal level, the closest I've felt in a long time to a worthwhile existence.

This isn't something I see very often, so I thought I'd share.


CN: Contains scenes of police brutality.

I met her at a party once. She seemed lovely.

I also really enjoyed Thought Slime's video on whether the CHAZ is a living heck.

As you know (you know about this, right?), India's government, which is led by the corrupt, far-right Modi, recently passed the anti-Muslim Citizen Amendment Act. There are widespread protests and things are looking very, very bad, but I'm going to give you one little spark of hope, which is that protestors in West Bengal came up with a truly ingenious way to block a highway.

According to a report by the Calcutta News TV, police personnel witnessed the scene as mute spectators while men chopped onions, potatoes and tomatoes to prepare biryani on the blocked road.

 

This has raised questions over the kind of protest. Police personnel did try to disperse the men making biryani but failed to do so as the protesters surrounded them.

More biryani-based protests please!

As I'm sure you also know, I consider Brazil's Bolsonaro to be the single greatest threat to continued human existence on the planet. And it looks like his terrible environmental policies have come back to bite him on the ass. Or the ear. Anyway he might have cancer. This is the rare time where I'm rooting for the cancer.

Someone fetch the smelling salts, the Tories have got the vapours! Quick, to the fainting couch!

Ardent defender of FREEZED PEACH Doug Ford, a former hash dealer whose family has been involved in violent crimes and even linked to a murder or two, is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that protesters would erect a pretend guillotine on the lawn of the Legislature, where he has enacted murderous policies targeting children, teachers, nurses, patients, poor people, indigenous peoples, people who get sick, people who like to not die of preventable diseases, people who breathe oxygen, and cute animals. So much so that he is asking his buddies in the OPP to investigate.

I guess his feelings got hurt or something. Gosh. That's so terrible. I hope no one decides to follow him around with said prop-guillotine at every public appearance, or put it on a sign and take it to protests, or post this song to Twitter and tag him in it:

It was a bit on the cold side, but in the interests of being able to look my kids in the eye tomorrow and myself in the mirror tonight, I went to the Black Lives Matter Rally in front of the U.S. Consulate. It was a huge crowd (especially since, as far as I know, it was organized yesterday, and also it's Toronto in November) and very well-organized. The mic kept cutting out, unfortunately, but what I could hear of the speeches were powerful and passionate.

I have some bad cell photos to share with you. Sorry about the blurriness, but you can get an idea of the scale.

I am a bad, bad blogger.

Like the rest of the English-language media, I've been totally crap about blogging what's been happening in Québec, which is only the most politically significant event in the country right now. I mean, I've been re-linking to a bunch of things on Facebook, but that's not the same as getting the word out about what's been going on there, what those red squares are all about, and the massive violations of civil liberties that are taking place while the rest of Canada has a long nap.

Okay, so it all started with a student strike over tuition rates. Yes, Québec tuition rates are the lowest in the country. Entitled Boomers, forgetting all about their own advantages, say that Québec students are spoiled brats for wanting them to stay that way. I say, if your city has the lowest amount of homicides, does that mean you should raise that rate to be on par with the rest of the country? A post-secondary education is mandatory for any job above minimum wage (and increasingly required for minimum wage jobs), and tuition rates are a barrier that keeps lower-income people out. Period. Québec's low tuition rates have kept the province more egalitarian (that and universal daycare).

So it's not just any strike, but the largest in Canadian history. And it's been violent. By which I mean the cops have been gassing and shooting these kids. Several young people have lost eyes because the cops are aiming for their heads.

If that's not enough to hit all your rage buttons, the government just passed an emergency law, Bill 78, drastically restricting civil liberties, particularly around campuses. It initially defined a "riot" as a gathering of 10 or more people; that was later amended to 50, which still rules out some of your more exciting dance parties. There have been mass arrests and kettling, the same techniques that, two years after the G20 here, have been deemed illegal and immoral.

And yet the movement keeps growing. The students aren't discouraged, the protests keep getting bigger, and are drawing international support. Even—and you're going to love this one—the National Post is coming around:

“Entitlement.” We hear that word associated again and again with student protesters in Quebec. Usually, it’s preceded by the words, “sense of.”

“They think someone owes them a living,” disgruntled critics harrumph. “Wait until they get into the real world.”

Setting aside the fact that this intergenerational hectoring dates back to Socrates, let us ask: Who exactly is making the charge? Quebec has had low tuition rates for a half century. That means almost every living adult in the province, having already been afforded a plum goodie, is now wagging his finger at the first generation that will be asked to pay the tab. So who really is entitled here?

So that's why a lot of us are wearing red squares. This has become much more than disgruntled students not wanting to spend half their careers repaying a massive debt. This is about class, and wealth distribution, and equal opportunities for all.

And it's kind of amazing.

( cut for video that autoplays )

If nothing else happens today, May Day 2012 will be forever remembered as the year the Left remembered about graphic design.



( post 'em if you got 'em )