For Harper, 6 CF-18s in Kuwait, all war all the time, phoning up the Pentagon asking where we can become more militarily engaged…all these things lead to a war posture, including a soldier being killed at home. A war posture is good for Harper’s base and makes Canadians more scared
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Politics, Re-Spun: Against Collective Forgetting
Workers must do our part to Stop Harper! Happy Labour Day! 🙂 In Stephen Harper’s Canada, we keep enumerating the things we’re losing: meaningful legislative debate, evidence-based policy, public science, a free and open society, among other things. But what happens if we go too long with a slow erosion
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Welcome to the 1,000th Politics, Re-Spun Editorial!
Steve Harper, the greatest threat to Canadian security in the modern era. Happy August! Happy Day! I have a few comments about this, the 1,000th editorial at Politics, Re-Spun. But you can read them below, about my sabbatical plan, new visions for this almost 12-year-old website, and other things. But
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Just How Many BC Government Comms Staff Are There?
Below are all the job titles of all the comms staff in the BC Government Communications and Public Engagement bodies as of last week. Count with me! 🙂 There are 278 people! 278. That’s more than a few. The records include folks in these two areas: Government Communications: which tends to
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: How Translink Impedes Transit Use
Translink is “being evasive on exactly how much money is being spent on this.” via Compass Card program delayed again by TransLink – British Columbia – CBC News. How’s that for not surprising. Translink is notorious for its taxation without representation: taking municipalities’ money without providing democratic representation to municipalities.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Occupy Movement Has Changed the Narrative, But We’re Not Done
Recently, with the WEF spending the last few years acknowledging global income inequality is a problem, I’ve declared a kind of victory for the Occupy Movement: getting the lexicon on the 1% and inequality on the tongues of the sly gazillionaires who rule the world, and into mass consumption. Now
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The 1% Has More Solidarity Than We Do
In Davos, the 1% rule the world. Literally. They also have the guns. The 1% are claiming we have it out for them; that if we don’t tone down the rhetoric and stop calling them names like “the contemptuous rich,” we might end up starting a class war. But they
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Robocop Remake Skips its Elysium Class Warfare Moment
Don’t bother with the Robocop remake. The original–campy, sensationalized, mildly intolerable–still succeeds in one key element: examining class warfare. You’d think that in an era of post-2008, the 1% being called out as contemptuous greed-mongerers and the Occupy Movement, that a Robocop remake would examine in a contemporary frame, the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What Does Soft Fascism Look Like These Days?
We don’t see brown shirts and jackboots, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t seeing the de-democratization of our society. In Vancouver this month, armed police with guns drawn, raided a house because they suspected people inside not of being terrorists, but of spray painting “No Pipelines” all over the place.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: A Little Bit of Civil Terrorism…
A little bit of civil terrorism keeps the population docile, afraid of irrational and unjust behaviour from law enforcement [sic] but hey, it helps us all live more peacefully because if you’re not a terrorist, you have nothing to fear from police terrorism via unconstitutional and racially discriminatory persecution. Right?
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Occupy, For Democracy
Journalists protest the erosion of freedom of expression in Canada on Feb. 27 in Toronto. Photo Credit: Hiba Zayadin When I write about soft fascism, I sometimes feel too Canadian. I don’t want to be impolite and talk about hard or old school or 20th century fascism because frankly, when
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Occupy Vancouver Reboots Tonight!
Occupy Vancouver reboots tonight to join the worldwide #WaveOfAction that began on April 4 and runs [at least] to July 4, 2014. We will meet in Grandview Park on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. 615pm is the start time, though honestly, I’ll be there a bit
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Help Conservative Senators Stop Harper’s Banana Republic
Emperor Stephen Harper and his double double. Interesting times indeed. 8 Conservative senators have decided that Emperor Stephen Harper has no clothes. The Emperor has whipped and intimidated his backbench, cabinet and senators for a long time. Senator Hugh Segal stood up to him on bad legislation. Though he left
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The World Economic Forum Is Now Occupy’s Mouthpiece
By the way, if you were keeping track, the World Economic Forum rules the world. They’re the richest corporations in the world getting together with governments to plan the world. And why not, they’re the elite. And it turns out, since you’re keeping track, that Occupy has been quite successful.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: BC’s New Landscape and Ecology Eradication Projects!
Once upon a time, before we knew much about ecology and systems theory, corporations just went around raping and pillaging the countryside, polluting whatever they wanted. Shhh, there’s a secret new law: it’s open season for corporations to rape and pillage our environment. This came back to me grotesquely in
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Occupy Canada For May Day, With Bananas
A few days ago, I wrote about picking May Day as a good time for Occupy Vancouver to reboot itself and catch up with the Occupy Movement’s worldwide #WaveOfAction. But I think that idea can be bigger, it can be a day for all of Occupy Canada to reboot. Here’s
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Welcome to Stephen Harper’s Banana Republic
#PMSH goes #BananaRepublic: the (un) #FairElectionsAct lets incumbents SUPERVISE their own election! pic.twitter.com/SG3IT8GMAz #cdnpoli — Politics, Re-Spun (@PoliticsReSpun) April 6, 2014 Just how stupid does Stephen Harper think we are? He thinks that we’re fine with the idea that incumbent parties should be able to pick the poll supervisors in
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What Occupy Vancouver Could Look Like
May Day, on May 1st: do you think we could get Occupy Vancouver up by then? I know how we can get this to work. I really do. And I’m not talking about tents or physical 24 hour occupations, in particular, right now. I am however talking about 2 things:
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What Occupy Vancouver Could Be Up To
While the worldwide reboot of the Occupy Movement is afoot, Occupy Vancouver version 2.0 is still notional. However, if you want to see a little bit of what it could be doing today if it had coalesced yesterday, you’d show up this afternoon at one of the 1%’s tree forts.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Calling For An Occupy Vancouver General Assembly
It’s now Friday, April 4, 2014. Greetings, world, the reboot of the Occupy Movement, the Worldwide #WaveOfAction [follow it live in Twitter here], has begun in a variety of places around the world! And it will last for 3 months while it evolves its next phase. But as it turns
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