Mexican Union

Great story - as usual - from Fox News today.  Apparently, the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) signed an agreement with the government of Mexico to teach Mexicans about their federal rights to UNIONIZE (once they cross the border, however they cross the border). 

Not only that, but the governments of Ecuador and the Philippines signed similar agreements with the NLRB.  No talks yet of any similar agreements being reached by the NLRB with Kenya. 

Imagine an America where employers can't horsewhip illegal Mexicans without them going all Norma Rae.  Why, if Mexicans know their rights, they may use them!  Where will we be then?  I don't want to live is a dystopian America that pays foreign brown people more than $1 an hour. 

And get this:  the NLRB can actually get visas for illegals to stay in the country if they're part of a labor investigation.  So you club your Mexicans into working 50-hour days and pay them a dollar a ton for cotton picking, and then you can't fire them to get them deported ahead of the law?  What kind of world is that?  When I mistreat my guest workers, I want to do so knowing that I can get them out on the banana boat well ahead of the heat. 

What's really funny about this article is that it makes no criticisms at all about these agreements.  Not a word.  Because they know that if you're reading it, you are already outraged.  You can hear the dog whistle.  Your tax dollars are being spent to unionize illegal workers!  You know what to do (eat more cheesies and complain to the mailman).  This is a straight story about the US signing these agreements in the Politics section - with no political commentary at all.  They literally don't even have to say it. 

The other funny thing is that it made the news at all.  Nobody else (that I can find) is reporting this "story." Unless you hate the feds and you hate the illegals, there's just nothing there.  Talk about knowing your audience! 

There's a quote from the NLRB:

"Those are the only countries that the NLRB has MOUs [Memorandums of Understanding] with," said spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek."

You can just hear the sigh in her voice, can't you?  The call came in from the Bureau of Rightist Freakouts (in this case the 'Washington Examiner' picked up by our dear friends at Fox), and poor Jessica drew the short straw.  Can't you just see it? 

'Who's going to talk to the Examiner guy?'
'No way - I did last week.'   
'Jessica - you get it!'
'Put it on speaker!'

And that was the only quote they used.  It's so completely in their sweet spot that all they need is to toss it out there.

It's a bit like picking on Fox News - it's too easy.  You want to find the dumb + racist, Fox will hook you up any time day or night.  Some of us go there to be shocked by the depths of Fox depravity, but others go there to be shocked by the 'depravity' that Fox reports on.  It's the two sides of the bell curve meeting in the middle.

Fair and Balanced indeed.

Cheney Time!

They love the war, those conservatives.  That's actually both conservatives and Conservatives - as a species and a party, conservatives are all in for blood sport.  Of course, like rightist lizard Dick Cheney (former Vice-War Monger of the US), most of them were too flat out cowardly to put their own sorry butts on the line.  Not to disparage those (of us) who did not serve, but if you got five Vietnam deferments, try not to sound so much like John Wayne (who used his star status to duck out of WWII). 

Speaking of sorry butts, Stephen Harper - our home-grown Cheney - is extending Canada's "mission" against ISIL.  I put "mission" in quotes because what really is the mission?  To protect Canadians?  Try telling that to the brave Canadians who have been serving a combat mission on the ground in Iraq when the mission was sold to Canadians as an advisor role.  Those Canadians are distinctly less safe, and their safety will be increasingly in jeopardy over the course of the next year.  Certainly Sargent Andrew Joseph Doiron paid the full measure of his devotion on this mission. 

Which begs the question:  what are they going for?  Are they fighting or advising?  Already, with a force of around 1000, they are too many to advise and too few to fight.  What are the goals they are trying to achieve?  The text of the new authorization starts out badly, calling ISIL a "terrorist group."  As we've reviewed here, they are anything but "terrorists."  They scary and murderous and mean and criminal, but they are not terrorists.  Their intent and achievements are in the field of nation-building.  And despite the attempts of two failed states and lots of American and Canadian firepower, they are building that Islamic state.

Which is a bad thing, but not something that counter-terrorist tactics will do anything to stop.  We should be looking for solutions.  ISIL/ISIS is a humanitarian disaster and a fascistic dictatorial religious nuthouse nightmare.  But the bombing and the thousand Canadians are not the solution. 

Harper seems to take naturally to Cheney tactics.  Part of the American Bushista Junta was to keep the country on a permanent war footing, bot frightened of terrorists and puff-chested warmongers at the same time.  Harper is doing the same with Canadians.  Lots of war, lots of terror.  The new terror law he just passed is classic Cheney - curtailed freedoms and enhanced police powers. 

My greatest fear during the dismantling of American democracy, ongoing since 2001, is that the same thing would inevitably happen to us up here in Canada.  Welcome to Harper world.  War, terror, a news blackout, climate and science denial - this guy's got it all. 

Can Canadians do what Americans haven't had the guts to do?  Can Canadians take back Canada?

Stay tuned.

Bibi's Back!

The St. Patrick's Day gift to the world this year was the re-election of Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel.  What better reason to drink yourself stupid than the prospect of another Bibi term.  He's a darling of the Crazy Right in the US, so no explanation of his positions is required.  Like that pathetic lot, he is racist, warmongering and elitist.  Set your war clock forward an hour and your peace clock - just throw that thing away.

The election results are far from surprising, however.  The Israeli people do not elect their government.  The Islamic world calls the shots.  In a world where there is raging conflict in Syria, conflict and a failed state in Iraq, a Saudi Arabia that funds all kinds of extremism while staying out of conflict, and Iran just being Iran, the right wing will run Israel. 

Israel is a tiny country in a constant state of war.  In their 67 years they've been forced to repeatedly fight for their lives.  Not just for their right to exist as a country or their form of government as most countries do.  Israel's enemies have continuously and explicitly stated that they will commit genocide and wipe out the Jewish citizens of the Jewish state. 

They've done remarkably well against long odds.  For much of their existence no country - not even the US - would sell them arms.  They fought for their existence with smuggled bullets.  When the US did start arming them, the Soviet Union doubled down on arming their enemies.  Egyptian and Syrian forces were repeatedly rebuilt and re-equipped after being defeated, shortening the cycle to the next conflict and adding to the Arab chances of victory. 

A form of peace has come as the Soviet Union collapsed and the Arab world came to realize that war was too expensive to pay for by themselves.  First Jordan, then Egypt signed peace agreements.  Syria, in no shape to cause trouble with the loss of their sponsor, has maintained a quiescence if not a formal cessation of hostilities. 

At the bottom of the lull, Israelis tried to get an agreement with the Palestinian population.  The Oslo accords nearly got there, but the odious and unmourned Yasser Arafat was a terrorist at heart and spurned the best deal his people will ever be offered in favor of more blood and more treasure for his personal coffers.

When the violence returned, the right wing Likud party came with it.  The peaceniks were discredited.  Really, you can't sign a unilateral peace agreement.  The other side has to agree to stop as well. 

So Israel went from peace with Yitzak Rabin and Shimon Peres to war with the likes of Ariel Sharon and Bibi.  If it's to be a fight, elect a fighter. 

Look:  Israel has defeated it's external enemies for the time being and has to figure out what to do with a Palestinian population that continues to hate and attack them.  Palestinians are raised to believe in a 'right to return' that will never exist and never take place.  They are raised to be terrorists - literally.  Summer camps for children are named for suicide bombers. 

The existence of Israel and her people are always at risk.  They are surrounded by a billion Arabs who would rejoice at their death.  We can't sit secure in Washington and Ottawa and understand their existence - nobody is firing rockets at us and no mass of people has sworn our genocide. 

If we want another Rabin to make another attempt at peace, we have to work toward setting the conditions for that peace.  That means America has to clean up the mess we made in Iraq.  The failed state that we created has to be overhauled.  ISIS - a product of that failure - has to be crushed.  ISIS is our fault.  Syria has to find a peaceful resolution to their civil war.  And Iran has to be dealt with. 

It's a tall order, but the first step is to recognize that we will never have a planet at peace until we find a peaceful way to deal with conflict in the Islamic world.

Modder Foxer

Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder is - or rather was - a chaplain in the US Navy.  Wes was suspended recently because his style of hate-counselling isn't in what you'd call the highest tradition of our armed forces.  Fox News and the usual Fox News Outraged Former Politicians (tm) believe that Wes's right to religious liberty has been trampled.  Trampled!

Wes is accused by his GAY MARRIED! assistant of:

"Telling a woman that she was “shaming herself in the eyes of God” for having premarital sex.
Telling a student that homosexuality was wrong and that “the penis was meant for the vagina and not for the anus.”
Berating an unmarried student for becoming pregnant."

So Modder is fighting for his right to be a sex-shaming, homo-hating Neanderthal Bible-basher.  Good luck with that.  Wes believes that since his religion is intolerant and backward, he should get to tell military personnel what he thinks they should do - and not do - with various body parts. 

Good old Fox is finding support for Wes's message to military naughty bits:

"Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a Southern Baptist Air Force Reserve chaplain, told me he plans to raise the issue of Chaplain Modder with the Pentagon.

“The religious liberty issue in the military needs to stop,” Collins said. “The rulings are clear. As a chaplain we are provided to stay within the tenets of our faith. You cannot force me to counsel or to provide service outside the tenets of my faith.”'

Yes, that's true:  as a Chaplain, you have to go with what your faith commands.  But the part that's missing from their little heads is that if your faith contradicts the rights of serving military personnel to live their lives as they need to you must QUIT.  If you can't support the homo sex stuff, fine:  don't be a chaplain. 

Your right to suck up my tax dollars is dependant on your performance of your duties.  If your religion is so ISIS-narrow, than okay.  Go back to whatever 'speaking in tongues' snakepit you crawled out of.  You're not eligible to serve in the military forces I pay for. 

Of course, presidential hopefuls - as in 'not a hope in hell' - Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum stand shoulder to shoulder with Wes.  Their tolerance for intolerance knows no bounds.  Ted Cruz is all over this as well.  It will be fun for the three to get a media bounce when the religious Modders keep them in the primary race long enough to show America how much they are not needed. 

The last bit of mirth in this story is provided by the title:  "More than 40,000 rally for Navy chaplain accused of being anti-gay."  40,000 people signed an on-line petition.  Wow.  Librarians at public libraries South of  the Mason-Dixon line must have been pretty busy showing all the Fox-watching geezers (median viewer age 68) how to sign an on-line petition!

The Matrix Economy

Do you remember the movie The Matrix?  That's a rhetorical question:  I know you remember The Matrix.  It was way cool - 'bullet time,' Mr. Smith, Neo, the red pill.  What's not to like. 

It occurs to me that the future dystopia depicted in the film is a lot like the way our economy operates.  I was reading a bit about the Depression. No, not the 2008 Bush-Obama free-fall, but the Great Depression of the 1930's. 

At that time, unregulated big money interests placed huge bets which they could not cover.  At the same time, unforeseen effects (crashing farm prices caused massive loan and mortgage defaults, etc.) depressed the economy and made many assets worthless.  Holders of the debt had to call it in at a time when the assets used as collateral were worth roughly what the chewing gum stuck under your desk is worth (don't look- you know it's  there). 

Hmm.  Maybe I am talking about 2008. 

The Republican response by President Hoover was to bail out the Banksters.  At a time when broke and starving war veterans were setting up a shanty town in DC to demand federal help, the only aid Hoover sent was in the form of active-duty soldiers with fixed bayonets to chase them out of town (and later brag about it). 

Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) bailed out his friends in the big banks (but not the little ones which were folding and wiping out their depositor's life savings).  Fast forward to 2008, when the response to the burst housing bubble which led to millions of underwater mortgages and thousands of foreclosures was met by a Wall Street & AIG bailout.  Again, Banksters were bailed out and the little guy lost homes and life savings.

The 1930's produced Franklin D. Roosevelt, the greatest friend the little guy ever had.  FDR fixed the banking system, the farms, and even added Social Security.  He paid for enormous public works projects to keep people employed.  He gave Americans back their dignity. 

We haven't been so lucky since 2008.  President Obama talked FDR but has run the place as Reagan.  Even 'Obamacare' is a right-wing Heritage Foundation idea from the 1980's.  The American Right has moved so far right that moderate-right Obama seems like he's on the left.  If only he had the guts to be FDR (or Lyndon Johnson, but that's a story for another day). 

In The Matrix, the world is run by massive machines which harvest humans for the energy their bodies produce, because the sun's rays are blocked and that's the only source of energy (quite a stretch, I know).  To keep the humans quiet in their pods, they are connected The Matrix, a 24/7 virtual reality based on 1999 civilization. 

Isn't that what the economy is all about?  Millions of us working and spending for an elite of unknowable super rich and global corporations?  None of us are individually  important to the 1%, but together we are indispensable.  We are fed dreams of wealth and happiness by corporate media constantly.  Every bit of news and entertainment is funneled to support the worldview of our corporate masters.

Look at Wal-Mart.  The Walton family are some of the wealthiest people on the planet.  Their wealth derives entirely from people who shop at Wal-Mart.  No one of their shoppers matters to them, but without the mass of shoppers they're doomed.  Target failed in Canada - they didn't deliver enough Matrix goodies to their pod people. 

Look:  the "elites" expect us to stay happily hooked up to the machines that draw value from our efforts.  They take it for granted - our labour is their birthright.  But they're not really giant robots and they have no right to our sweat equity.  We know that when things go wrong, they and the government that works solely for their interest will save their worthless, venal, over-privileged hides long before (instead of) ours.  

The only way to fight the machines is to get together and refuse to donate our energy.  We have to pull out of our pods - take the red pill. 

Bringing Up Bibi

The Crazy Right (tm) that's running the Republican Party these days is a hyper thermonuclear generator of pure Irony and Hypocrisy.  And you have to be careful around that stuff.  It is pure and uncut.  I mean, the used to 'step on it' for use on humans by cutting it with terms like 'Compassionate Conservative."  Not any more.  This stuff is pharmacy-grade.

The latest is their letter to Iran.  In it, they say they'll stop any agreement reached by the Obama White House.  I'm trying to think of a word like 'disgraceful' but with a tinge of 'treasonous.'  In the country they mimic love for - America - the executive branch gets to do the foreign policy.  The Senate gets to ratify treaties, not negotiate them. 

But this isn't a treaty.  The unhinged neo-fascist Republicans will do anything to keep their country of residence (not of loyalty) in a permanent state of war.  A diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem (not 'crisis') would end their constant braying to attack that country. 

As much as they hate Obama, he's done a pretty good job of keeping the U.S. on a permanent war footing.  The military-industrial complex that owns most of Congress has little reason to fear that he's going to start ordering plowshares any time soon. 

The letter doubles-down on their outrageous invitation to the rightist PM of Israel Bibi Netanyahu to speak to Congress.  Again, that's not their job. 

The ultra-powerful Hypocrisy Generator that powers their movement screams like a virgin in a horror movie any time Obama can be accused of overstepping.  But they get to overstep.  Why?

In part it's because they broke all the rules already.  They set records for using the filibuster when in the minority and ensured that the last Congress was the least effective in history.  They lie as a matter of course - it's their only language.  They play to their base endlessly, creating an ignorant and dysfunctional worldview based on clear falsehoods.  Obamacare doesn't work!  Except that it does.  Global warming is a hoax!  Except that it isn't.  They Gays!  The Gays!  They're ruining marriage!  Except that their rights have nothing whatsoever to do with the rights of heterosexuals.  Everybody gets rights - it's in that document they're trying to shred - the Constitution. 

No more rules.  No more 'gentlemen's agreement' on the filibuster.  Indeed - no more gentle or civilized behaviour.  Only a Fox News perspective that the Crazy Right (tm) is always allowed to do whatever they want because freedom. 

Look:  if Obama can cut a deal with Iran to stop them from building a bomb - or trying to - that's a good thing.  The President already said he'd take 'no deal over a bad deal.'  The US and Israel are not going to unilaterally disarm.  If the Iranians don't live up to their end of the deal we'll know and we'll act. 

The threat to the American way of life is not coming from Iran or anywhere in the Middle East.  It's coming from the American right. 

Rich American Asshole

Not content with stealing everyone's retirement savings with the self-inflicted financial meltdown they dropped on us, while continuing to fill our televisions with reality shows about how fabulous they are, America's rich are now assaulting us with their odious offspring.  Massively over-privileged youth have taken the silver spoons from their mouths and have sharpened them into prison shivs.  That's ironic in the sense that in America the rich don't serve time. 

Young Connie Hilton - Paris's baby brother, took a fit on a transatlantic flight.  Let's review his antics: 

"According to an FBI affidavit, Hilton acknowledged calling other passengers “peasants” and said he had would have killed one flight attendant if another passenger hadn’t calmed him down during the 10-hour July 31 flight.

Hilton ignored instructions to keep his seat belt fastened and began pacing the aisle as the aircraft ascended, the document said.

When told to sit, he launched a series of tirades that had some of the children aboard the plane in tears. He threatened to kill several flight attendants and a co-pilot, and threatened to get them fired, the affidavit said.

“I could get you all fired in five minutes. I know your boss,” Hilton said in one of the document’s few quotes that didn’t include an expletive."

That seems hilarious, except that he made a bunch of kids cry and may have, you know, crashed the plane if he's gone after the cockpit.  What's really pathetic is that he probably could get them all fired.  That's how Medieval America works these days.

And calling them peasants?  How appropriate.  All I could think of is this (3:07 mark):

And now he's reportedly going to plead guilty:

"The offence carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail, a year of probation and a $5,000 fine, but under the deal prosecutors said they would ask a judge to give Hilton only probation."

I wonder what the punishment would be for one of us 99% folks?  Five years on an Alabama road team?  In America, the rich don't serve, because we're all future lottery winners and don't want to screw up the sweetheart deal we'll get when we're the ones in the chips.  Never mind that the US has the least social and economic mobility in the developed world. 

In South Korea, they're so fed up with their worthless worthies that they are actually sending the nut-rage chick to the slammer.  I'm sure she'll get her nuts handed to her on a plate in prison. 

Dennis Leary sang the theme song for these "lovely filth."  He just needs to update the song with a verse about crashing the economy and making peasant children cry on airplanes. 

MH370 - Now That's a Conspiracy Theory, My Friend

Jeff Wise, pilot and science writer, has written a Sistine Chapel of a conspiracy theory about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines MH370 a year ago next week.  Really, this one has it all, and I don't mean that in my usual snide, more-cynical-than-thou sense.  I pretty much believe this one.  It's just crazy enough to be true. 

My fascination with this disappearance started as soon as I heard about it, which was about two hours after it happened.  See, I was on a Boeing 777 (same kind of plane) over the South China Sea at the same time MH370 disappeared.  It was two hours into a four-hour flight to Indonesia.  Of course the news wasn't broadcast to passengers - thinking back, I wonder if they cut the news feeds?  Hmmm. 

It also stands out because one of my colleagues, before I left for Asia, had told a meeting full of people (regarding my impending departure): "I hope the plane crashes and he dies.  I just hate him."  Too bad I missed that meeting!  Stay classy, Waterloo! 

Those words came immediately to mind as I followed the story as well as I could during my stay in Jakarta and through several subsequent weeks in Asia.  It just seemed so bizarre - how was it that there was no radio transmission?  If it was a terror attack why did it stay in the sky for seven hours after it stopped communicating? 

The article is great, I strongly recommend it.  It follows Wise's appearances on CNN as an expert with some insider anecdotes.  Fun.

What's really fun is the compelling case he makes for his theory. Go read it now if you haven't already - I spoil it below.

So...  Spoiler alert.

There.  Putin has the plane and the passengers.  But why?  Will it turn up on the anniversary of its disappearance?  Doubtful. 

That's sort of the sad thing (aside from the obvious).  If the Russians took the plane, they could not let those people live.  There's too much danger that over a period of years some of them would be able to connect with their families.  If any of those people ever emerge, the game is up. 

Of course, most of the victims were (are?) Chinese.  That secretive country might be able to swing a backroom deal with the Russians.  If anybody could pull it off, it would be China. 

What would be the motive?  Wise suggests a few but none are really compelling.  If this really happened, I think it would simply be a message to the West from Putin:  'I'm capable of doing this sort of thing.'  Remember - he was career KGB.

And I've always thought the Americans know what happened.  They are so paranoid and militaristic, there's no way they missed this.  The US Navy spent decades mapping and monitoring the oceans.  The plane didn't hit the water and disappear where the US Navy couldn't find it.  Same in the air.  The US Air Force knows where your kid threw his paper airplane and what kind of kite he likes.  We know from a slip decades ago by Richard Nixon that we read the radar of other countries.  And with the NSA making a real-time copy of the internet (hello Mr. NSA Analyst!  Do you like my blog?) and all the electronic signals they can get, it's inconceivable that they don't know. 

Anyway, Wise makes a great case, and I don't see any loopholes.  I particularly like that he looked at the mysterious ethnic Russian Ukrainian passengers:

 

Are you kidding?  They look like extras in "Licence To Kill." 

 

Which is where I put the brakes on and remind myself that this is just a crazy conspiracy theory and in all likelihood these gentlemen have been killed in a tragic accident.  Sorry.

 

Still - intriguing.