Capitalism vs Democracy

This article in the Globe & Mail about the ongoing debt crisis in the USA and Europe caught my attention. Not because it offered any interesting or unique insight into the origins or solution to the present debt crisis facing western capitalist nations. What was interesting was the matter-of-fact assumption that democracy was a hindrance to the ability of capitalism's profitability and growth to be restored. As Konrad Yakabuski sees it, western political institutions are "dysfunctional" because populations don't want to see their living standards hammered in order to pay for a debt crisis that has been caused by the failures of the system and the attempts to overcome those failures by rewarding the wealthiest and most corrupt members of society.

European leaders are similarly hamstrung by dysfunctional political systems. Their attempts to contain the euro-zone debt crisis have repeatedly come up short because the measures needed to comfort financial markets exceed the tolerance of voters.

In reality it's not the political system that is dysfunctional per se. It's failure is a result of the fact that capitalism is failing. The pressure that this crisis creates demands one of two responses - abolish capitalism or see not just pundits imply the need for a curtailment of democracy - but see it implemented in practice.

Gee Skewers Ford

I was about to write another pithy dismembering of the lies and stupidities of the mayoralty of His Honour Rob Ford. But then I read today's article in the Globe & Mail by Marcus Gee and, frankly, I couldn't have said it better myself. We may all remember Ford's bluster during the election about how he would eliminate Miller's land transfer tax and license registration fees because he, Rob Ford, cares about the taxpayer. Yeah, you guess it, it was all bullshit and Ford has turned around and is raising those same funds from different sources.

Once he became mayor, one of the first things he did was announce a freeze in property taxes and an end to the vehicle registration tax. But user fees come from the same pockets of the same overburdened folk that taxes do. His platform said nothing about higher user fees. Of course, it said nothing about service cuts either. Mr. Ford “guaranteed” there would not be any. Now we are facing the threat of both service cuts and higher fees.
His administration has already raised fees by $23-million to balance the 2011 budget and help make up for the loss of revenue from the vehicle tax. Fees for a host of programs went up about 3 per cent. The current review of fees is bound to recommend yet further hikes, putting more pressure on taxpayers.

I suppose that in some ways, while it is further proof that Ford is a sociopathic liar, it's consistent with his own view of the world, where defending the right to drive an automobile is sacrosanct, while those socialistic "services" like swimming and yoga for seniors are sapping the moral will of our great city. We need a strong dose of the real cost of things so that we will work harder, compete smarter and pay for everything as individuals, rather than pooling our resources to make life better for all - except insofar as it's for boosting the number of frontline cops to keep us in our place when we get pissed off by the fact that there's nowhere to take our kids on the weekend that won't cost an arm and a leg.

Today's article follows on from one last week that exposed the fact that Ford was either stupid or lying when he was throwing around the numbers viz labour costs as a proportion of the city budget, which I also covered here. Kudos to Gee for exposing Ford's fundamental dishonesty in driving through his agenda for the millionaires.

No revenue? No problem. Right, Mayor Ford? - The Globe and Mail

Dear NDP: The Globe & Mail Doesn't Like You

The federal Liberals can re-discover their True Grit - The Globe and Mail

I've thought that the Globe & Mail were a laugh since, years ago, I read an editorial condemning affirmative action as discriminatory - written by an editorial board, which, at that time, was entirely made up of white men. I mean, these guys have the kind of chutzpah that only rich, white bastards can have. God love 'em for it.

And now yesterday's editorial begging the beaten and pathetic* Liberal Party of Canada to get their act together. Why? Because only the Liberals and the Conservatives are worthy of governing. The NDP has not yet passed the Globe editorial board's test of governing competence. I have to say that I'm glad the Globe has relieved us voters of the too-heavy responsibility of deciding who is and isn't to our liking.

Keep on rocking in the free world, guys. By the way, if you want to look a little less like a white boys club, may I suggest that you put Margaret Wente on your editorial board? Not only is she a woman, she's also a snob and an asshole. She'd be just like one of the boys.

*I must admit that I feel sorry for the Liberals who are reduced to making Bob Rae their interim leader. If that isn't the kiss of death...

Why Is Christie Blatchford Such An Arsehole?

Police release new photo showing anarchist assault
It may seem like a facetious question but I really mean it sincerely. In many ways I'm actually inclined to like Christie Blatchford. She and her co-troll Rosie DiManno are a couple of tough women in a field still dominated by men. Hell, she covers crime, war and sports.

But she's just such a f***ing jerk. If I could find one article in which she didn't genuflect towards the cops, the Tories, the generals and sneer at youth, uppity immigrants (particularly Muslims), activists and anyone who might ask uncomfortable questions of their betters I would suspect that there was still an ounce of warm, beating flesh in the cold lump of coal that is her heart. But, given her breathless promo campaign on behalf of the Tories a couple of elections ago that was supposed to pass for journalism, I suspect that if she had any such flesh she cooked it up and fed it by hand to Mr. Harper on his battle bus when once they strayed too far from a Tim Horton's donut shop. She is a compromised and heartless sycophant to power, indeed.

Take her coverage of the hearings that began yesterday into the "G17" - the remaining 17 protesters being held by the cops in relation to rioting at the G20. She makes one good point - these trials shouldn't be held in secret and it is reflective of a more general problem in the Canadian court system. Then she spins this out as a "soft on crime" story in relation to these kids. Are the proceedings being hidden from view to protect the charged? I don't know but I doubt it somehow.

And since Christie, like a certain Martin Regg Cohn whom I wrote about yesterday, knows quite well what transpired over the past two weeks she is being more than a little coy when she whines about perceptions of the press.

It was the press, after all, who dutifully carried the farcical "weapons cache" that looked like the dressing room from the Medieval Times Dinner Theatre. It was so bloody obvious that these so-called weapons were pretty much anything that the police could dig up from the lockers in the basement of the police station - arrows fitted out with pool noodles? A chainsaw? Seriously? - and yet it was only when the guy who owned the scale mail armour and graphite swords came forward to inform the "scum of the press" that they were dumb as posts that they took any notice. So, perhaps Ms. Blatchford might like to note that the public does have reasonable grounds to suspect the abilities of the press if not their motives.

But besides this little oversight in her coverage, she is so busy sneering at these youth - whose strategy has been demonstrated to be an all-around bad idea (not least because they were so easily infiltrated by the cops - as all Black Blocs have been since at least as far back as Genoa in 2000) but whose hearts are probably in the right place. It was dumb to think that smashing windows would change the world or that the $1 billion police tab wouldn't be used in part to nail and vilify activists who thought so. However, a few broken Starbucks windows really aren't the story here.

Why doesn't Ms. Blatchford mention the extraordinary suspension of civil liberties - that turned out to be a hoax perpetrated on the city by the Chief of Police with the help of a little political sleight of hand on the part of Dalton McGuinty? She fulminates poetically on how the detainees have been treated wonderfully since being transfered to proper prison authorities - as though this is the same as the temporary detention facility. Yet makes no mention of numerous eyewitness accounts from people who haven't been charged (you know, the other 987 or so) who faced abuse physical, mental and legal.

She makes - as the headline of her article emphasizes - the race, class and dental care of the detainees as though this makes their political point invalid, the equivalent of "liar liar, pants on fire." And yet she doesn't note the policies of immiseration and austerity that were agreed at the Summit, which will ensure that people throughout the world will see their ability to feed, clothe and house themselves seriously diminished - including "middle class", white people here in North America.

No, she doesn't notice any of this because Christie Blatchford has used her talents and the fire in her belly not to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable", not even to question the more obvious elements of a police state strategy that unfolded in Toronto. She uses that energy to shore up her own position - with honest belief, no doubt - as a vicious terrier for whichever powers-that-be need her "assistance" at any given moment. In this case, she has played her part in occluding the issues at stake and contributed to a discourse that suggests protesters were frivolous and privileged punks - thus helping to also disappear the other 25,000 working people who roused themselves on a rainy summer weekend to send a message to Ms. Blatchford's masters that we shouldn't have to pay for an economic disaster that we didn't create.

The Globe & Mail's Phoney Gaza "Exposé"

You couldn't be in any doubt that the Globe and Mail were supporters of Israel, certainly not after their plaudits for Canada's lonely vote in the UN Human Rights Council against condemning Israel's "grave violations" in Gaza. Of course they even managed to justify Israel's bombing of civilians and civilian buildings with the thoroughly discredited claim that Hamas uses fellow Palestinians as human shields (not noting the irony that the Israel Defense Forces regularly use human shields,including children - despite a ruling by their own supreme court. See photos.)

The Globe's coverage also managed to miss the story that the studiously neutral International

Committee of the Red Cross condemned Israel for letting children starve next to the bodies of their dead mothers after refusing to allow ambulances to reach the wounded. Nor could I find on their website any account of the internationally covered story of Israeli soldiers shooting children carrying a white flag as a family fled - under orders from the IDF.

The Globe did manage to uncover a much more significant and important "scandal" from the war in Gaza, however. Remember how the IDF bombed that school and killed 43 civilians, many of them children? Well, it didn't happen. That's right, as the Globe says the report "doesn't stand up to scrutiny". Sure, 43 civilians were killed, many of them children. But the bombs landed outside the property line of the school. It just so happened that the civilians, fleeing under orders of the IDF, were standing outside of the school's walls, probably because they were crammed into a small school in their hundreds. So, while Israel lied about there being a sniper's nest, a mortar launching site, no casualties, and that the building was booby-trapped, the real story here is that the shells actually landed right outside the school. Besides demonstrating how utterly, utterly craven are the journalists and editors of the Globe and Mail they also raise questions about their own journalistic abilities. Every article about the school bombing that I could find, names the school al Fakhura - somehow the Globe came up with the name "Ibn Rushd Preparatory School for Boys". One wonders if the reporter was in the wrong place entirely.