Middle East at the brink as Netanyahu indictment looms

The big question hanging over the ME is how far will Bibi go to slip the criminal indictment noose?

To Beirut?

To Damascus?

All the way to Tehran?

What a coincidence that just as multiple corruption investigations into the greatest leader since Moses are coming to a crescendo, Israel finds itself yet again in the grip of a dire existential threat. Everybody in Israel knows there's only one way forward, and that's behind a proven strong leader. Fortunately, Israel has just such a leader.

Netanyahu.

Yes, in this dark and perilous hour, the nation must rally round the only man who can be relied upon to stand up to the ayatollahs. This is no time for petty bickering over trumped up allegations of malfeasance.

Corruption corrshmuction... leave the man alone already!


Hey, the "create a timely existential crisis" gambit has worked for him umpteen times before... why shouldn't it work this time?

Full throttle into the abyss

There's a great essay on view at Counterpunch today by Steve Horn, who writes for the DeSmog Blog.

Steve has got his knickers in a twist over government collusion in the master plan to turn Appalachia into a "petrochemical hub." Looks to me like the entire project is predicated on more fracking and fracking deeper.

Fracking, just in case you don't know, is about injecting toxic chemical cocktails deep into the earth under extreme pressure to break up rock formations that harbour gas and oil that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Fracking critics correctly point out that our freshwater aquifers are down there somewhere, and that fracking threatens our potable water supply.

Which it does.

More fracking means a greater threat to the water supply.

So what's the problem? If some ballsy entrepreneur can get rich by poisoning your water supply for the next ten thousand years, that's just "the American way."

It's the free market at work, don't you know.

It is a searing indictment of our world view that we permit a handful of "free market" hustlers to put our clean water at risk in perpetuity. Horn's article spells out the revolving door phenomenon wherein today's public servants are tomorrow's fracking lobbyists, and "democratic process" is circumvented.


That's just wrong.

What is fascism?

That's a word that gets tossed about a fair bit, fascism.

But what does it mean?

Nobody seems to know. The old school guys want to direct you to Gramsci's prison notebooks, but I wouldn't recommend that... unless you're in prison too and have as much time to read them as Tony had to write them.

We've been hearing the word more often since the advent of the Trump era. A lot of folks who never gave the question of fascism any thought pre-Trump suddenly got woke and realized America was in the clutches of a fascist dictatorship.

Or almost.

Or something...

They're not wrong, but it's got little or nothing to do with white supremacist 45 sitting in the White House today. White supremacist 44 wasn't much different when measured by policy outcomes.

So what is fascism?

Not sure, but when the interests of FacebookTwitterGoogle align so perfectly with the interests of the war profiteers at BoeingLockheedMartin, and when the guy who owns the Washington Post does hundreds of millions in business with the CIA, maybe some of us aging radicals should lay off the ganja for a spell and try and make some sense of it all.


It's not looking good.

Remember The FBI?

I'm talking about the TV show here. Kinda followed it a bit in the sixties, before I got woke and switched the channel to "The Mod Squad."

Were those guys cool or what?

Nevertheless, The FBI is where the wholesome image of the FBI was fabricated, the image that the Trumpists stand accused of besmirching.

Seriously? Wasn't Hillary doing the same thing just a week before the election? The FBI is politicized today, was then, and in fact it was born politicised. Anybody remotely leftish at any point in the Bureau's existence would have died laughing if they witnessed the current controversy.

The FBI wasn't politicized? Get outta here!

J Edgar Hoover had his hands all over that TV series. He personally approved every actor who played an FBI agent. He and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. consulted on pretty much every episode. Hoover crafted a propaganda masterpiece! For one prime time hour every Sunday night, The FBI gave the FBI an hour of very compelling free advertising.

That show made the agency's reputation for integrity and ethical policing. Apparently there are still folks around who buy the bullshit.

If you're one of them, google FBI history and do some reading.

I assume that the people running the reputation chestnut up the flagpole are well educated and intelligent folks who already know the truth. The news business is in the news business though, not the truth business. They're sometimes reporting facts, but often they're creating the very facts they're reporting on. That pretty much explains the last 30 years of Donald Trump's career, and especially the last couple.

No, the infotainment-industrial complex, big papers, big news providers across all platforms, provide many essential services to the "deep state."

Telling it like it is ain't one of them.

TTC spokesperson Wanda Dunkelwasser explains why TTC no longer hires recent immigrants

Here is her explanation.

Yup, that's all too true and at the same time it's entirely fake news.

But often enough fake news turns out to be truer than true. Here's a very current story about the school-bus driver shortage in the Toronto area.

There is an obvious remedy to this driver shortage - pay the drivers a living wage already!

In Toronto, a unionized cement truck driver delivering concrete to a construction site makes about four times the hourly wage of a school bus driver.

Tells you something about our priorities as a society, doesn't it?

Knowing how things work in Justin's just society, nobody's gonna give the bus drivers a raise. Instead, the bus companies will produce a "labour market analysis" that shows Canada has a grievous shortage of qualified school-bus drivers, and voila, the floodgates will open to thousands of temp foreign workers who have driving experience.

Even if that driving experience consisted of driving twin oxen instead of a V-8.

Celebrating American Culture

Ya, I know...  WTF is "American culture?"

American culture is a lot of things. But generally speaking, when we talk about American culture, we tend to forget about these folks.

That's a video worth watching if you're interested in American culture. The Lake Lanier Poker Run is high culture in the deep South. I didn't see a black face till about the sixteen minute mark, and I think those guys were spectators, not boat pilots.

Didn't see a lot of fat chicks either.

What I saw a lot of is fat middle-aged white dudes and skinny young women and million dollar fast boats.

So what's wrong with that?

Nothing.

There may be a dearth of black faces in this celebration of excess, but let's get real; there's more to owning a million dollar boat than being born white. Otherwise every trailer park honky would have one. Speaking as a honky who is a lot closer to the trailer park than I am to a million dollar boat, I don't find this unreasonable.

Not that I have a problem with the boats. To a certain extent I understand the allure of a fast boat. I get twin 502's in a 32 foot Cigarette. I get four 400R Mercs hanging off the transom of a 40 foot Fountain...

But when I hear these guys talking about sixteen fifty Mercs I gotta admit I don't even know what they're talking about.

So watch that video and celebrate this obscure corner of American culture, where nubile young women flock to middle aged fat dudes and black folks serve drinks.

And remember, this is all for charity. They got 300 boats registered. From what I saw, the average boat was a million bucks and tow vehicles were $100,000 plus. Overall you're probably looking at close to half a billion in hardware in that video.

They're hoping to raise $400,000 for charity...


God bless America!

Phun with Phil

Here's a tip for dog lovers. Having a dog is great. Especially a dog like this.




Phil is just a joy. She loves the heated front seats in the Subaru. Of course she's not allowed anywhere near the front seats when the Farm Manager is riding with us, but when it's just me and the hounds, well, what the hell...

Why would you want to let a heated seat go to waste?

Having two dogs may or may not be even better. Around here we're fond of the two-dog model because when we have to step out, they've got one another for company. These were our two dogs BP, or "before Phil."



Here they are on the shore of Colpoys Bay awaiting the next stick toss.

But don't ever get sucked into having three dogs. Nosiree, three dogs is a dog pack. A dog pack is more than the sum of its parts. A pack develops a pack mind that can have a completely different personality than any of the dogs may have individually. That's why you read those sad stories about the little old lady who was ripped to shreds by her pack of schnauzers.

Individually, each of those dogs loved her.

As a pack, they woke up one day and their pack mentality told them she was the prey.

That's something we hope to avoid here at Falling Downs.