Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Noodlemaid
noun /ˈno͞odl-mād/
Definition of NOODLEMAID
1 : an unethically ambitious person
2 : a servant to power
Examples of NOODLEMAID
* He's just another noodlemaid trying to make a sale.
* That MP noodlemaid will support any bill tabled to secure a cabinet post.
* If you feel compelled to join the Party, you must be a noodlemaid.
Origin of NOODLEMAID
Contemporary English
First Known Use: 21st Century
Definition of NOODLEMAID
1 : an unethically ambitious person
2 : a servant to power
Examples of NOODLEMAID
* He's just another noodlemaid trying to make a sale.
* That MP noodlemaid will support any bill tabled to secure a cabinet post.
* If you feel compelled to join the Party, you must be a noodlemaid.
Origin of NOODLEMAID
Contemporary English
First Known Use: 21st Century
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Political Dogma, the Canadian Cult
In our schools and through the media, we are taught about our nation on the premise that our political body is legitimate. Its administration may be corrupted, but the underpinnings remain. We still fundamentally believe we live in a certain type of democracy where the government works with Canadians in mind, and those elected are our chosen people for this public service. But does the reality align with the theory?
To me, when I examine theory and fact, when I try to make sense of what I hear with what I see, they seem at odds with one another. I wonder, what's wrong?
So simple logic suggests may be useful to re-examine the basic premises of our thinking, namely political legitimacy. If politics is not legitimate, what is it? It appears upon a comprehensive analysis, or even a cursory one made with clarity, that politics in no more than a propaganda campaign perpetuated by our cultural dogma.
This political campaign invariably remains true to its goal, persuading the people to accept abuses of state power. And the people in state offices are the most faithful, the most ardent believers (I call them victims), of the campaign wars prior. And like many deeply religious faithful, the deeply political faithful feel a calling to the priesthood. They take on the message and, rarely straying from its piety, proselytize it to the people and the following generations.
In their quest to become admirable servants of the faith, the priests and priestesses lecture us from their campaign trail. They tell us that their political piety is true, that their sect is best, and that they deserve to be seen as the Right Honourable, Yes, they claim, they are acting in the interests of all, and hopefully with our blessing.
What makes these political priests and priestesses so convincing is that they do, in fact, truly believe. They believe in their hearts the dogma, that politics is in service for the people and the nation, and that everything is on the up-and-up -- despite the dissonance, despite the facts pointing elsewhere.
Their followers, the political congregation, taught similarly, believe the message (more or less). And together they perpetuate the fables of yesteryear.
Now doesn't this framework of understanding make sense of the facts and the world around us significantly better than the one we are led to believe?
To me, when I examine theory and fact, when I try to make sense of what I hear with what I see, they seem at odds with one another. I wonder, what's wrong?
So simple logic suggests may be useful to re-examine the basic premises of our thinking, namely political legitimacy. If politics is not legitimate, what is it? It appears upon a comprehensive analysis, or even a cursory one made with clarity, that politics in no more than a propaganda campaign perpetuated by our cultural dogma.
This political campaign invariably remains true to its goal, persuading the people to accept abuses of state power. And the people in state offices are the most faithful, the most ardent believers (I call them victims), of the campaign wars prior. And like many deeply religious faithful, the deeply political faithful feel a calling to the priesthood. They take on the message and, rarely straying from its piety, proselytize it to the people and the following generations.
In their quest to become admirable servants of the faith, the priests and priestesses lecture us from their campaign trail. They tell us that their political piety is true, that their sect is best, and that they deserve to be seen as the Right Honourable, Yes, they claim, they are acting in the interests of all, and hopefully with our blessing.
What makes these political priests and priestesses so convincing is that they do, in fact, truly believe. They believe in their hearts the dogma, that politics is in service for the people and the nation, and that everything is on the up-and-up -- despite the dissonance, despite the facts pointing elsewhere.
Their followers, the political congregation, taught similarly, believe the message (more or less). And together they perpetuate the fables of yesteryear.
Now doesn't this framework of understanding make sense of the facts and the world around us significantly better than the one we are led to believe?
Monday, October 17, 2011
OWS etc.
NOW it is coming on like a revelation that governments are in bed with corporations and all is not well?
The entire state is founded on corruption and crime. Warfare and theft of lands from, dare I say, sovereign nations is a fundamental economic policy of our capitalist state. Every single day the economic sanctions of capitalism are killing off people around the globe and little is recognized here in Canada. And then there is the torture and the genocide and the use of nuclear and chemical weapons, a few of the more obvious vulgarities of our nation we barely concern ourselves about.
Our government is not legitimate, not in any conscionable sense. It's legitimacy is derived through force, at the end of a barrel of a gun. You do as the government tells you, or it crudely steals your property or throws your body in jail. It matters not whether you are right in the most just sense of the word.
So what do we do to make it all run, this machination of criminality parading itself as legitimate government? We pompously herd ourselves down to the polls and endorse the regime. And we turn over a portion of our earnings each year which continue funding its economic and barbaric crimes. For this is what we, the 'good citizen' does, do we not?
It matters not in our society to be accountable to something more than an imposed Constitution contorted hither and yon to serve the purpose of the state, or to something more than books of fable which have long lost their essence in our times.
We don't seek to think clearly, concisely or honestly with ourselves. We don't desire to dig too deeply inside lest we find out what we are all about. Our participation with the government through our vote and our labour makes us complicit in the crimes of state, it does not absolve us from those very crimes,
If we believe that we are more than farm animals, that we were not born simply to satisfy the greedy needs of the government farmer know as state. then we need to individually start acting like more than animals. We need to lead through our humanity. Only then can we live freely and be a good neighbor.
~ Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
The entire state is founded on corruption and crime. Warfare and theft of lands from, dare I say, sovereign nations is a fundamental economic policy of our capitalist state. Every single day the economic sanctions of capitalism are killing off people around the globe and little is recognized here in Canada. And then there is the torture and the genocide and the use of nuclear and chemical weapons, a few of the more obvious vulgarities of our nation we barely concern ourselves about.
Our government is not legitimate, not in any conscionable sense. It's legitimacy is derived through force, at the end of a barrel of a gun. You do as the government tells you, or it crudely steals your property or throws your body in jail. It matters not whether you are right in the most just sense of the word.
So what do we do to make it all run, this machination of criminality parading itself as legitimate government? We pompously herd ourselves down to the polls and endorse the regime. And we turn over a portion of our earnings each year which continue funding its economic and barbaric crimes. For this is what we, the 'good citizen' does, do we not?
It matters not in our society to be accountable to something more than an imposed Constitution contorted hither and yon to serve the purpose of the state, or to something more than books of fable which have long lost their essence in our times.
We don't seek to think clearly, concisely or honestly with ourselves. We don't desire to dig too deeply inside lest we find out what we are all about. Our participation with the government through our vote and our labour makes us complicit in the crimes of state, it does not absolve us from those very crimes,
If we believe that we are more than farm animals, that we were not born simply to satisfy the greedy needs of the government farmer know as state. then we need to individually start acting like more than animals. We need to lead through our humanity. Only then can we live freely and be a good neighbor.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated.
~ Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Does Ideology Matter?
Once show, only a blind microcephalic could not see the failing ideology where 'business interests are paramount' for exactly what it is: Fascism.
The state message, the propaganda of conservatism many have consumed and now believe -- the breeding ground where half-baked thinking intentionally mutates our lexicon so a corporation is de facto a person, where the national interest is interchangeable with the business interest, and where freedom can only be achieved when we have unfettered freedom for business -- here, where these muddied waters of the mind become the messiah, lays the neo-conservative ideology.
Ideology serves a purpose. It helps to learn exactly what that purpose is and what it means, where it has come from, how it has has grown and where it is going. It's seriously disturbing to think how anyone can champion such an neo-conservative ideology once understood.
Ideology is everything. Start here and choose: people or business? Despite the rhetoric heard and taught, they do not march in unison. How hard is it to understand business interests would be overwhelmingly elated if their workforce toiled for free?
I am not going to convince anyone of this truism and do not even try, I simply point it out. We all have to have the courage to confront the genesis of this assault against our thinking for ourselves.
The answer we should seek yet cannot see is simple:
ALL PEOPLE MATTER
not just the self-described 'successful' ones who, equally self-described, 'earned' their 'just' rewards.
Good luck. We are all in this together.
The state message, the propaganda of conservatism many have consumed and now believe -- the breeding ground where half-baked thinking intentionally mutates our lexicon so a corporation is de facto a person, where the national interest is interchangeable with the business interest, and where freedom can only be achieved when we have unfettered freedom for business -- here, where these muddied waters of the mind become the messiah, lays the neo-conservative ideology.
Ideology serves a purpose. It helps to learn exactly what that purpose is and what it means, where it has come from, how it has has grown and where it is going. It's seriously disturbing to think how anyone can champion such an neo-conservative ideology once understood.
Ideology is everything. Start here and choose: people or business? Despite the rhetoric heard and taught, they do not march in unison. How hard is it to understand business interests would be overwhelmingly elated if their workforce toiled for free?
I am not going to convince anyone of this truism and do not even try, I simply point it out. We all have to have the courage to confront the genesis of this assault against our thinking for ourselves.
The answer we should seek yet cannot see is simple:
ALL PEOPLE MATTER
not just the self-described 'successful' ones who, equally self-described, 'earned' their 'just' rewards.
Good luck. We are all in this together.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The Gravediggers
The work of conservatism is our Canadian national agenda. I suspect every reader of this blog is a 99%er. Take note. We are all being robbed ruthlessly, systematically, and without human concern by the corporate powers entrenched within state. We need to unite.
Here we are fighting ourselves, bickering about whether a BC teacher should make what an Ontarian teacher makes; whether the Greek people are lazy socialists; whether the NDP is better or worse than the CPC; etc.
The facts are simple. We just need to look. The government is in no way, shape or form representative of the people at large. It operates on a for private-profit ideology that is inhumane and cruel to people everywhere, preferring to target people of colour in other locales so we do not see its crimes so clearly. But do not kid yourself that it will not fire the guns it already has aimed at you. If you do, you are woefully naive.
Canada is one of the world's top-ten military suppliers, yet we audaciously call ourselves peace keepers. Why not warmongers? And make no mistake, we are a warmongering nation. Every single dollar spend on the military-industrial complex is a dollar diverted from the human needs that benefit us all - school, food, housing, the arts, health care, the aged, athletics, etc.
Every war waged results in civilians accounting for 90% of the deaths. War distills down to war against children, its most vulnerable victims. And yet we Canadians turn a blind eye by patriotically 'supporting our troops', by voting for the madmen who send them off to slaughter and murder the children of far off lands. Can it get more shameful than that?
We need a revolution of thought, not more refinement, more tinkering, more re-wiring of the destructive time-bomb about to detonate. Our government talks about threats to our nation, our need for security, and how it will protect us. But when it says 'us', it means the interests of corporatists. Anything the corporate bosses demand, they get. If it does not come immediately, then as soon as the government has the nerve to provide it against the desires of the people, gambling it can still wring a bit more from the people without revolt. That is the only check on government conduct -- take all it can without sparking insurrection.
The people can all rot in hell as far as the government is concerned. Even the very soldiers it hires to fight its wars, to participate in the global crime-wave, are thrown in the trash. But this has always been the case. Sadly moms and dads are still proudly enlisting their children to be killers. How perverted is our thought that allows this to happen?
The very most government offers is to placate us with token words of concern backed with the return of some nominal amount of monies it 'legally' robbed prior (with threats of state looming everywhere if you do not abide). For what good has government ever provided for the people on its own initiative?
Government play for keeps, and violence, if needed, is always on the table. Canada (irrespective of political stripe) has been involved in one war crime after another lately, directly or otherwise. And STILL we march to the polls, giving our support with a beguiling, useless vote. A vote offered only to keep us believing the charade of its democracy.
We, and I speak most specifically about the middle and upper class, but not 1%ers, need to get our act together and see how we are the roadblock preventing the survivalist and systematic reforms this nation, this world, demands.
We -- the lawyers, the police, the army, the teachers, the doctors, the engineers, the ferry workers, the bureaucrats, the middle management, etc -- facilitate its crimes against ourselves everywhere. We are its guardsmen.
We accept its valueless bribes of flat screen TVs; of over-sized, decorative homes; of shiny new gas-burning vehicles of all sizes and makes; of the properly tagged and iconized clothing, and countless other worthless pieces of consumerist greed, masking as success, as payment in full for our consent to its horrors. It's disgusting, and we need to fundamentally change our way of thinking before we destroy ourselves.
The corporate sociopathic pursuit of profit is destroying the planet, and destroying humanity. Why are millions of people dieing from hunger, undetonated land mines left as trash after the invasions, warfare, exposure, or from poisons in our environment? Why are we facing a shortage of what we all really need and want only to allow the destruction to be financed?
There is an uprising coming. The middle class is feeling the noose tighten as the dream of home ownership dies, and the guarantee of a successful job on the back of a university education evaporate. And a few (far too few at this time) of the upper class are seeing the problems of uncontrolled and uncontrollable state as well. Soon, whenever it finally sinks in, we will all gladly join the homeless, the working poor, the under-educated, the Indians, the destitute, the people who have always borne the brunt of capitalist folly.
We must all start now and join the ever-bubbling insurrection against this sham called government and take charge of our own humanity, of our destiny as peoples sharing a planet. The government you elect (regardless of Party) is the hangman. It directs the spectacle of crime as the shadow of socio-pathological corporations, not as representatives of human beings or guided by the citizen's desires.
We are severely delusional culture, but our humanity remains inside. We must let our humanity reign over our world, not the dogma of madmen in bed with lunatics. We are the gravediggers created by the horror show called capitalist democracy. It's high time we got busy.
Here we are fighting ourselves, bickering about whether a BC teacher should make what an Ontarian teacher makes; whether the Greek people are lazy socialists; whether the NDP is better or worse than the CPC; etc.
The facts are simple. We just need to look. The government is in no way, shape or form representative of the people at large. It operates on a for private-profit ideology that is inhumane and cruel to people everywhere, preferring to target people of colour in other locales so we do not see its crimes so clearly. But do not kid yourself that it will not fire the guns it already has aimed at you. If you do, you are woefully naive.
Canada is one of the world's top-ten military suppliers, yet we audaciously call ourselves peace keepers. Why not warmongers? And make no mistake, we are a warmongering nation. Every single dollar spend on the military-industrial complex is a dollar diverted from the human needs that benefit us all - school, food, housing, the arts, health care, the aged, athletics, etc.
Every war waged results in civilians accounting for 90% of the deaths. War distills down to war against children, its most vulnerable victims. And yet we Canadians turn a blind eye by patriotically 'supporting our troops', by voting for the madmen who send them off to slaughter and murder the children of far off lands. Can it get more shameful than that?
We need a revolution of thought, not more refinement, more tinkering, more re-wiring of the destructive time-bomb about to detonate. Our government talks about threats to our nation, our need for security, and how it will protect us. But when it says 'us', it means the interests of corporatists. Anything the corporate bosses demand, they get. If it does not come immediately, then as soon as the government has the nerve to provide it against the desires of the people, gambling it can still wring a bit more from the people without revolt. That is the only check on government conduct -- take all it can without sparking insurrection.
The people can all rot in hell as far as the government is concerned. Even the very soldiers it hires to fight its wars, to participate in the global crime-wave, are thrown in the trash. But this has always been the case. Sadly moms and dads are still proudly enlisting their children to be killers. How perverted is our thought that allows this to happen?
The very most government offers is to placate us with token words of concern backed with the return of some nominal amount of monies it 'legally' robbed prior (with threats of state looming everywhere if you do not abide). For what good has government ever provided for the people on its own initiative?
Government play for keeps, and violence, if needed, is always on the table. Canada (irrespective of political stripe) has been involved in one war crime after another lately, directly or otherwise. And STILL we march to the polls, giving our support with a beguiling, useless vote. A vote offered only to keep us believing the charade of its democracy.
We, and I speak most specifically about the middle and upper class, but not 1%ers, need to get our act together and see how we are the roadblock preventing the survivalist and systematic reforms this nation, this world, demands.
We -- the lawyers, the police, the army, the teachers, the doctors, the engineers, the ferry workers, the bureaucrats, the middle management, etc -- facilitate its crimes against ourselves everywhere. We are its guardsmen.
We accept its valueless bribes of flat screen TVs; of over-sized, decorative homes; of shiny new gas-burning vehicles of all sizes and makes; of the properly tagged and iconized clothing, and countless other worthless pieces of consumerist greed, masking as success, as payment in full for our consent to its horrors. It's disgusting, and we need to fundamentally change our way of thinking before we destroy ourselves.
The corporate sociopathic pursuit of profit is destroying the planet, and destroying humanity. Why are millions of people dieing from hunger, undetonated land mines left as trash after the invasions, warfare, exposure, or from poisons in our environment? Why are we facing a shortage of what we all really need and want only to allow the destruction to be financed?
There is an uprising coming. The middle class is feeling the noose tighten as the dream of home ownership dies, and the guarantee of a successful job on the back of a university education evaporate. And a few (far too few at this time) of the upper class are seeing the problems of uncontrolled and uncontrollable state as well. Soon, whenever it finally sinks in, we will all gladly join the homeless, the working poor, the under-educated, the Indians, the destitute, the people who have always borne the brunt of capitalist folly.
We must all start now and join the ever-bubbling insurrection against this sham called government and take charge of our own humanity, of our destiny as peoples sharing a planet. The government you elect (regardless of Party) is the hangman. It directs the spectacle of crime as the shadow of socio-pathological corporations, not as representatives of human beings or guided by the citizen's desires.
We are severely delusional culture, but our humanity remains inside. We must let our humanity reign over our world, not the dogma of madmen in bed with lunatics. We are the gravediggers created by the horror show called capitalist democracy. It's high time we got busy.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Mark Your Ballot with an "X"
It's not as ironic as one might think. Just as the illiterate sign off with an "X", Canadians, a politically illiterate lot, do the same on election day. Entering a contract of further governance by a system grounded on sociopathic economics (all viable parties willingly operate within the same economically driven political paradigm), the voter dutifully marks the ballot with an "X". Seen this way, voting cannot bring us change; it can only provide more of the same. And isn't that exactly what we have been witnessing the last century or more?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Democracy is not a Right
Why are we still squabbling about electoral reform when a majority of Canadians already want it? ~ from Politics Respun
To answer such a question, let us first consider the controlling elite and the Canadian version of democracy. Specifically, the rulers have always made their subjects beg, grovel or revolt before offering a loosening of the democratic strings. And this increased shift toward democracy always comes with a price.
For example, women wanted a vote? OK, fine. But it meant women were now going to have to enter the workforce, become overtaxed, and allow the family unit to suffer in her absence. The two-income family, now doubly taxed to bankroll government, was the price paid for women to be granted their fundamental ‘right’ to vote. This is the magnanimous treatment of the Canadian government toward its free subjects. Yet this factual perspective of Canadian women's suffrage is interestingly absent from our public school texts.
So each time I read about new ways to tally the votes or those voting for, let alone championing, a political Party — a top-down organization that forces its employees, your 'elected' representatives, to comply; an organization that serves the capitalist paradigm and its superstars long before the people — I know nothing is going to change without a price.
Unfortunately, the social collective seems unable to reach, let alone accept, some simple truths about state power. Power begets power. As state power progressively builds up its authority and coercive might, it cuts off legitimate discourse with the people. Eventually the encroachments of the state over the people becomes intolerable. At this time the people discover they have drifted well beyond the threshold of a peaceful solution. They must now fight for their basic inalienable rights. The revolutionary march begins. History is littered with this social pattern and Canadians are not immune from it if we refuse to learn from the past.
We are headed politically in the wrong direction. Varying our course a few degrees or changing our speed is not going to solve the systemic problems we face. We need to fundamentally change our understanding of government and politics. But first we must come to know our role within these bodies: our role as the legitimating force to all acts of state, both good and evil. Blind reliance on the state's propagandized message of our liberal democracy (in words alone) is not just insufficient but extremely detrimental to a better life for all.
As Emma Goldman said a century or so ago, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”. Cynical, yes, but all too true. We either set up a legitimate peoples democratic government, based on the rule of law and decided by the people, or we endure what has been imposed on us.
So far we are enduring and, admittedly, it is far less than what most others endure. Nonetheless, this situation is shameful and an embarrassment to Canadians, particularly when one comes to understand that we suffer less simply because others unseen suffer more.
To answer such a question, let us first consider the controlling elite and the Canadian version of democracy. Specifically, the rulers have always made their subjects beg, grovel or revolt before offering a loosening of the democratic strings. And this increased shift toward democracy always comes with a price.
For example, women wanted a vote? OK, fine. But it meant women were now going to have to enter the workforce, become overtaxed, and allow the family unit to suffer in her absence. The two-income family, now doubly taxed to bankroll government, was the price paid for women to be granted their fundamental ‘right’ to vote. This is the magnanimous treatment of the Canadian government toward its free subjects. Yet this factual perspective of Canadian women's suffrage is interestingly absent from our public school texts.
So each time I read about new ways to tally the votes or those voting for, let alone championing, a political Party — a top-down organization that forces its employees, your 'elected' representatives, to comply; an organization that serves the capitalist paradigm and its superstars long before the people — I know nothing is going to change without a price.
Unfortunately, the social collective seems unable to reach, let alone accept, some simple truths about state power. Power begets power. As state power progressively builds up its authority and coercive might, it cuts off legitimate discourse with the people. Eventually the encroachments of the state over the people becomes intolerable. At this time the people discover they have drifted well beyond the threshold of a peaceful solution. They must now fight for their basic inalienable rights. The revolutionary march begins. History is littered with this social pattern and Canadians are not immune from it if we refuse to learn from the past.
We are headed politically in the wrong direction. Varying our course a few degrees or changing our speed is not going to solve the systemic problems we face. We need to fundamentally change our understanding of government and politics. But first we must come to know our role within these bodies: our role as the legitimating force to all acts of state, both good and evil. Blind reliance on the state's propagandized message of our liberal democracy (in words alone) is not just insufficient but extremely detrimental to a better life for all.
As Emma Goldman said a century or so ago, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”. Cynical, yes, but all too true. We either set up a legitimate peoples democratic government, based on the rule of law and decided by the people, or we endure what has been imposed on us.
So far we are enduring and, admittedly, it is far less than what most others endure. Nonetheless, this situation is shameful and an embarrassment to Canadians, particularly when one comes to understand that we suffer less simply because others unseen suffer more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)