Islamic State's top towelhead 'o terror is a gonner! The good news came directly from the lips of The Real Donald Trump, so obviously it must be true.
This is of course not the first time the good guys have killed Abu Bakr "Big Daddy" Baghdadi. Check out this accounting of his various deaths at International Business Times. That's from over two years ago and doesn't include his several assassinations since. This guy has more lives than Bin Laden!
So did they really actually get him this time?
Who knows? Maybe...
But consider this counter-narrative. It was a particularly hallucinatory week in US foreign policy. It began with Trump's announcement that he, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, was withdrawing American troops from Syria. This sent the entire US defence and foreign policy establishment into a collective shit-hemmorage.
What!? That's treason! Nobody, not even the President, pulls US troops out of a foreign country they were illegally occupying! This just IS NOT DONE!!!
By the end of the week, forces higher up the food chain than the Commander-in-Chief had over-ruled Trump. US troops weren't leaving Syria after all; they were merely re-locating within the country to "protect the oil," which like all oil globally, pines for the protective umbrella of Uncle Sam.
Having exposed Trump as an ineffectual puppet president and American foreign policy as a bankrupt farce, the folks behind the curtain needed some catchy headlines to take our eyes off this shit-show.
Voila, there we have it; US Special Ops kill top terrorist in daring mission!
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Here we go again...
Bolivia just had an election, and the guy who won is not a favorite of Washington. Ergo, the election was obviously fraudulent.
Bolivia is another one of those countries where the US government-funded "Non-Governmental Agency" the National Endowment for Democracy has been generously building capacity and stuff, which boils down to funding any group of malcontents who promise to make trouble for the government the USA does not approve of.
The US immediately declared the election fraudulent, and was instantly backed up by the usual ass-kissers in the EU and its South American vassal states. No surprise there.
But it prompts this scoldy story by Evan Dyer at CBC; Canada not ready to condemn Bolivia's election. The tone suggests that Canada is being remiss in not puckering up in sync with the other toadies.
Don't worry, Evan; we'll surely pucker up soon enough. Give it 48 hours.
Bolivia is another one of those countries where the US government-funded "Non-Governmental Agency" the National Endowment for Democracy has been generously building capacity and stuff, which boils down to funding any group of malcontents who promise to make trouble for the government the USA does not approve of.
The US immediately declared the election fraudulent, and was instantly backed up by the usual ass-kissers in the EU and its South American vassal states. No surprise there.
But it prompts this scoldy story by Evan Dyer at CBC; Canada not ready to condemn Bolivia's election. The tone suggests that Canada is being remiss in not puckering up in sync with the other toadies.
Don't worry, Evan; we'll surely pucker up soon enough. Give it 48 hours.
Friday, October 25, 2019
The new now
As I've mentioned before, the Farm Manager still has her day job with the Greywater Board of Ed.
That's the same school board whose top gun was busted in a plagiarism scandal a few years ago and who takes home the same pay as a Brigadier General in the Canadian Forces. Because school boards are on the front line when it comes to defending democracy, I suppose...
The school board has been ruthlessly cutting back on Education Assistants for years now, even while the local college was minting dozens of newly qualified contenders every year. Thanks to union seniority rules, the EA staff now consists of a whole lotta middle-age gals who are prone to the manifold ailments that come with the ageing process.
And now they have access to legal marijuana!
According to the FM, all the EAs talk about around the water cooler is how to grow pot, how to cure pot, and how to turn pot into soothing balms for whatever happens to ail you.
That's the new now.
That's the same school board whose top gun was busted in a plagiarism scandal a few years ago and who takes home the same pay as a Brigadier General in the Canadian Forces. Because school boards are on the front line when it comes to defending democracy, I suppose...
The school board has been ruthlessly cutting back on Education Assistants for years now, even while the local college was minting dozens of newly qualified contenders every year. Thanks to union seniority rules, the EA staff now consists of a whole lotta middle-age gals who are prone to the manifold ailments that come with the ageing process.
And now they have access to legal marijuana!
According to the FM, all the EAs talk about around the water cooler is how to grow pot, how to cure pot, and how to turn pot into soothing balms for whatever happens to ail you.
That's the new now.
Chrysler 300
I first met Kipling when he was bleeding all over the interior of a 1969 Chrysler 300. The guy who owned the Chrysler says to me, "he's bleeding all over my fucking upholstery!"
Me and Mr. Chrysler were standing on the side of what is now officially "Line 86," but was at the time known as the Elmira Road. Kipling was out giving a demo ride to a couple of guys who were interested in buying his Chevy II.
I'd almost bought it before Kipling bought it. It had been owned by one of the Leader boys. The Leader boys worked at a gas station on the corner of Silvercreek and Waterloo Avenue. I walked by it every day after school on my way to my job at John's Supertest.
On the lot they had a couple of cars for sale. A 66 Chevelle with a 327 for $1,500, and a 64 Chevy II with a 283 4bbl and four speed, for a thousand bucks.
I worked crazy hours at John's Supertest, and was salting away a bit of cash from my dollar an hour job. That Chevy II called my name every time I walked by. My sixteenth birthday was coming up, the day I would have a driver's licence... and a 64 Chevy II!
Unfortunately, somebody bought it out from under me before that happy birthday.
Kipling.
A few years later, I'm talking to Buddy beside the road that night. There's two other guys still in the Chevy II, either dead or comatose, and Mr. Chrysler doesn't seem that interested in pulling them out and having them bleed over what's left of his upholstery.
That test drive had gone awry. Kipling had downshifted and stood on the gas to pass that Chrysler 300. A rookie mistake.
The road was a little damp due to the first snowflakes of the season.
The Chevy II spun out, left the road, and hit a tree head-on right across the road from the Brubacher Sales Arena.
That was quite a deal in its time too, the Brubacher Sales Arena. Some sharpie from the States comes up, buys a farm just down the road, calls it a "Sales Arena," and before you know it, they're in the news for selling a dairy cow for a hundred thousand bucks!
But I digress.
Kipling fully recovered from his injuries, as did the comatose guys in the Chevy II. In fact, they recovered so well that they sued Kipling's ass nine ways from Sunday. He's still paying the price today.
I don't know if Mr. Chrysler ever got over his bloodied upholstery.
Me and Mr. Chrysler were standing on the side of what is now officially "Line 86," but was at the time known as the Elmira Road. Kipling was out giving a demo ride to a couple of guys who were interested in buying his Chevy II.
I'd almost bought it before Kipling bought it. It had been owned by one of the Leader boys. The Leader boys worked at a gas station on the corner of Silvercreek and Waterloo Avenue. I walked by it every day after school on my way to my job at John's Supertest.
On the lot they had a couple of cars for sale. A 66 Chevelle with a 327 for $1,500, and a 64 Chevy II with a 283 4bbl and four speed, for a thousand bucks.
I worked crazy hours at John's Supertest, and was salting away a bit of cash from my dollar an hour job. That Chevy II called my name every time I walked by. My sixteenth birthday was coming up, the day I would have a driver's licence... and a 64 Chevy II!
Unfortunately, somebody bought it out from under me before that happy birthday.
Kipling.
A few years later, I'm talking to Buddy beside the road that night. There's two other guys still in the Chevy II, either dead or comatose, and Mr. Chrysler doesn't seem that interested in pulling them out and having them bleed over what's left of his upholstery.
That test drive had gone awry. Kipling had downshifted and stood on the gas to pass that Chrysler 300. A rookie mistake.
The road was a little damp due to the first snowflakes of the season.
The Chevy II spun out, left the road, and hit a tree head-on right across the road from the Brubacher Sales Arena.
That was quite a deal in its time too, the Brubacher Sales Arena. Some sharpie from the States comes up, buys a farm just down the road, calls it a "Sales Arena," and before you know it, they're in the news for selling a dairy cow for a hundred thousand bucks!
But I digress.
Kipling fully recovered from his injuries, as did the comatose guys in the Chevy II. In fact, they recovered so well that they sued Kipling's ass nine ways from Sunday. He's still paying the price today.
I don't know if Mr. Chrysler ever got over his bloodied upholstery.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
The seven dangers of blogging while stoned
1. You totally forgot you wrote a blog.
2. You vaguely remember you wrote one, but you can't remember what it was about.
3. After doing some internet research, you realize that you wrote about conspiracy theories and paranoia.
4. You'd be paranoid too if everybody was after you!
5. You realize that your biggest challenge, going forward, is growing more and better weed.
6. You remembered you wrote a blog, but you forgot that nobody reads it.
7. Last but not least, how realistic is it to imagine that we'll ever have an open and unabridged internet?
Ya, that's the kind of shit I'm thinking about after I've fired up the vaporizer.
2. You vaguely remember you wrote one, but you can't remember what it was about.
3. After doing some internet research, you realize that you wrote about conspiracy theories and paranoia.
4. You'd be paranoid too if everybody was after you!
5. You realize that your biggest challenge, going forward, is growing more and better weed.
6. You remembered you wrote a blog, but you forgot that nobody reads it.
7. Last but not least, how realistic is it to imagine that we'll ever have an open and unabridged internet?
Ya, that's the kind of shit I'm thinking about after I've fired up the vaporizer.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Blame the climate crisis
The other day me and the Farm Manager took a tour up to Lion's Head, an exquisitely pretty town half-way up the Bruce. We come this way often, and it's always been on the back burner, at the back of what's left of my mind, that this would make a sweet retirement destination.
Mind you, the locals might take a dim view of a neighbour who has four or five parts vehicles decorating his property and likes to pee off the porch.
We were out by the marina and we both remarked on how much beach debris, including random driftwood and lots of those softly rounded (by millions of years of wave action) white rocks that make up the shoreline, had been thrown onto the marina parking lot.
They'd obviously been walloped by a fairly nasty nor'easter.
While we're on our walkabout, I hear, "hey, is that place still for sale?"
The FM was pointing to a place across the harbour that we'd noticed when we were in Lion's Head last summer. A little waterfront cottage perched on the edge of the cliff. It was on offer in the low four hundreds, which seemed like a bargain. We figured it would be snapped up in days.
But here we are a few months later, and the place is still for sale! We decided to go for a closer look.
There was nobody around. The view is spectacular and the house is cute beyond belief, all cobblestone and hardwood. But...
Those nor'easters have been beating the hell out of the waterfront. The last storm took the shoreline within thirty feet of the house. Another nasty storm or two, and your wee cottage on Georgian Bay is gonna be in Georgian Bay.
Thing is, the shorelines of his neighbours don't seem to be impacted. That's because the neighbour to the east had a sturdy stone and concrete seawall, and the neighbour to the west had a very robust steel seawall. Unfortunately for them, the erosion will now wash away their properties behind their seawalls when future storms hit, as they inevitably will.
Once that damage is done, the cottages further down the waterfront will be at risk.
Somebody needs to take action here, and soon!
My question; is this the result of the climate crisis, or is this the consequence of multiple poor decisions made by property owners?
Mind you, the locals might take a dim view of a neighbour who has four or five parts vehicles decorating his property and likes to pee off the porch.
We were out by the marina and we both remarked on how much beach debris, including random driftwood and lots of those softly rounded (by millions of years of wave action) white rocks that make up the shoreline, had been thrown onto the marina parking lot.
They'd obviously been walloped by a fairly nasty nor'easter.
While we're on our walkabout, I hear, "hey, is that place still for sale?"
The FM was pointing to a place across the harbour that we'd noticed when we were in Lion's Head last summer. A little waterfront cottage perched on the edge of the cliff. It was on offer in the low four hundreds, which seemed like a bargain. We figured it would be snapped up in days.
But here we are a few months later, and the place is still for sale! We decided to go for a closer look.
There was nobody around. The view is spectacular and the house is cute beyond belief, all cobblestone and hardwood. But...
Those nor'easters have been beating the hell out of the waterfront. The last storm took the shoreline within thirty feet of the house. Another nasty storm or two, and your wee cottage on Georgian Bay is gonna be in Georgian Bay.
Thing is, the shorelines of his neighbours don't seem to be impacted. That's because the neighbour to the east had a sturdy stone and concrete seawall, and the neighbour to the west had a very robust steel seawall. Unfortunately for them, the erosion will now wash away their properties behind their seawalls when future storms hit, as they inevitably will.
Once that damage is done, the cottages further down the waterfront will be at risk.
Somebody needs to take action here, and soon!
My question; is this the result of the climate crisis, or is this the consequence of multiple poor decisions made by property owners?
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Here's a headline you couldn't have imagined 20 years ago
Because twenty years ago, this human rights case would have been inconceivable.
The problem with stories like this, and also with the bicycle racing story that broke today, is that they invite scorn and ridicule on trans people generally. A few individuals obsessed with self-promotion thereby complicate the lives of the vast majority of those who just want to be who they are and get on with their lives.
If the current approach persists, within a few years trans women will own every record in women's sport.
That triumph of human rights will also mark a triumph of idiocy.
The problem with stories like this, and also with the bicycle racing story that broke today, is that they invite scorn and ridicule on trans people generally. A few individuals obsessed with self-promotion thereby complicate the lives of the vast majority of those who just want to be who they are and get on with their lives.
If the current approach persists, within a few years trans women will own every record in women's sport.
That triumph of human rights will also mark a triumph of idiocy.
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