https://mytotsmymind.wordpress.com/tag/life/

Stats Canada released their latest inflation numbers, those for the month of January, which, according to a CBC report, showed inflation restricted to one percent this year over last year, largely due to the falling price of fuel. That is all well and good, but methinks they might have a problem with the weighting of items and perhaps with what they include and exclude from the “basket” of goods and services that they weigh in their calculations. The fuel price bonus has already largely been recouped by the gas companies, but the price of produce, meat, dairy, and even chick peas has increased substantially, and I saw another item this morning that olive groves around the Mediterranean are stressed and under producing with a thirty percent rise in price on the horizon. The hummus futures market is in total turmoil, I would imagine. Also on the rise are hydro bills, MSP premiums, drug costs, insurance rates and a host of federal and provincial fees and levies.

Much of the reasoning for the current methodology became clear when the Gregorman mentioned that this one percent figure would be used to calculate revised pension rates and cost of living adjustments in labour contracts. Once again, our reigning clique proves that inflation is no problem until it hits wages and salaries, then the war is on.

By way of an update to the last rant, we should take notice of the signature on behalf of the government on the letters discussed in relation to university mandates: Amrik Virk.His named come up in relation to some dubious dealings as a member of the board of Kwantlen College. As of today, he is no longer the Minister of AE, but still sits in cabinet. Sad.

Another thought was that Christy Clark could well be taking her cues from one Stephen Harper when it comes to controlling information of all natures from curriculum to FOI requests. It looks like a threat to public participation in the political process.

Here’s the hissy fit:

I understand that progressive organizations are starved for cash and that they rely on folks tossing some coin in the hat as they stroll by on there web peregrinations. I dutifully pony up in varying amounts to at least a dozen different sites and organizations. I can’t cover them all at any meaningful level and assume that some, especially the larger, better-known organizations will get funded by their broader readership. It irks me when I get repeated pleas from even the best of sites for donations that I have often already made because, let’s face it, they tug at the little guilty part of my heart, no matter how old and grinchv I get. It gets to look something like the charity dance where you give once to what seems like a worthy charity and find that you get monthly mailings, e-mails and phone calls soliciting further donations so they can keep right on tugging at your coat tails. I’m good at phone calls, where I tell them that if they are phoning, they aren’t getting and that’s just the first step in what will be a concerted campaign to keep them off my line.

(Too bad that the live version of this, from Birmingham in 1980, is embed-disabled)

Duke Orsino:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1, 1–3

Two posts on the SF Gate caught my eye this morning, one about the highest paid musicians of the year, and the other about the music that U.S. interrogators used to torture suspects caught up in the web of renditions and extrajudicial lock-ups of terror suspects

I didn’t cross reference the two posts to see if there might be some overlap, but extrapolating from the titles gives me cause to bemoan the state of culture, and particularly music, in our current version of what passes for civilization. I wonder if the torturers had this in mind as they blasted eardrums with the abrasions of what their victims might otherwise have been able to have passed off as simple bad taste:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

–William Congreve

It reminds me, in a way, of many conversations I’ve heard over the years, in some of which I’ve been an active participant, about who is the best musician, the best instrumentalist, the best technician, the best whatever, until somehow some of us arrived at the point that this was primarily a matter of personal taste and stopped scoffing at other people’s assessments and also stopped particularly caring what others thought of what pleased us, or displeased us. Somebody likes almost everything and let ’em have it, but the desire to label the music that sells the most as the best (isn’t that what it is?) speaks really poorly of a culture that bows down to common taste and forgoes discussions of the content of the music. Conversely, it is almost perversely appropriate that we should torture captured souls from other cultures with the worst products of the sick society against which they are likely railing, such that they would know the righteousness of their cause even as their minds turn to jelly and scream out for relief before they move on to the next dimension. I once really believed that music was a force for good in the world until it became so commodified and misused that it became part of the destruction attendant upon people so distracted that they fail to see that their cultural icons, if they follow the mainstream, are most often in cahoots with the authors of the breakdown of any sense of community. Oh, darn, I’m starting to sound like Tipper Gore crusading against the moral breakdown of society through naughty lyrics in pop music.Torture and Big money: something to consider (now I’ll go back to my Eric Dolphy recordings).

Yes, my sort-of-kind-of-favourite-Premier-because-she’s-the-only-one-we’ve-got is holding forth over on the Globe and Mail about Gomeshi and abuse. Not to want to seem unconcerned, but let’s deal with Gomeshi the same way we should have dealt with Rob Ford: if he’s guilty of a crime let’s enforce the penalties and have done with it. Is this  Ms.Clark suggesting that comments by the leader of the opposition amount to abuse? Serious problem, especially coming from one who has abused the political process, the levers of government, the justice system and the English Language. But, then, we might have to admit that being straightforward doesn’t seem to be in the Premier’s toolkit.

So here’s some Misdirected Blues from one of my fave players:

Ian Anderson, spokesman for Kinder Morgan in a current ad campaign…

So this character gets on the tube telling us about the hundreds of conversations and how they’ve engaged with First Nations and that they will continue to listen to make their project the best it can be, but it’s meaningless because the part of the conversation he’s not hearing, along with his pals in Victoria and Ottawa, is that it shouldn’t happen at all. If KM wants to do some good and make a buck or two, how about doing something with geothermal: it should be right up their alley. I would still prefer that we do all this locally and that Kinder Morgan and all its carpetbagging cronies disappear back into the landscape in Texas and Oklahoma, where they might also want to consider other forms of energy so that their descendants can have something of a future.

It’s also galling that these campaigns, with all their half-truths, deceptions, misdirections and faux sincerity end up being paid with our money, as they write it all off their revenue stream as a cost of doing business, further enriching the media Mob who happily broadcast this shite and pocket the proceeds. Look-here, you get to tie your own noose!

I like this Ian Anderson better…

…at least his bluster and buffoonery is musical and utterly avoidable and its consequences are pretty negligible. I actually like a lot of Jethro Tull. I also like Blodwyn Pig and Jack Lancaster…

The Toronto Star, amongst others, reported on the phenomenon of the RCMP having routinely filed falsified flight reports, committing various transgressions against the general rules of flying. The report was touched off by reports from a whistleblower and was the subject of an inquiry by the Federal Integrity Commission whose leader, Mario Dion, has a rather tart comment on the RCMP failing to uphold laws it was designed to uphold. And, in typical fashion, the federal government didn’t want this material to get out to the public.

The investigation began in November 2013. The report remains under a legal challenge from the federal government, which wanted to quash the findings before they could be made public.

According to a report on The National, the rationale for burying the report was that material such as this would lead to a loss of confidence in the force. Wait, do we want to place confidence where it isn’t warranted?

Again, it’s a mistake to violate Transport Canada’s regulations about the operation of an aircraft, but the nature of the falsifications seems to point to a willingness to play somewhat fast and loose with the laws of physics, and specifically those relating to gravity, lift, thrust, mass and proximity to terra firma, laws against which there is no right of appeal. As Georges Brasssens stated so eloquently:

La loi de la gravité est dur, mais c’est la loi.

Less inevitable is the question of whose law the RCMP upholds, as we have seen when the force becomes the Pinkerton squad for energy companies, international banking schemes, bogus conferences and the like, such as we witnessed in recent confrontations on Burnaby Mountain where the force upheld the wishes of Kinder Morgan when the Law, in all its wisdom, issued an injunction against the City and citizens of Burnaby should they have had a notion to impede KM’s desire to do exploratory work leading to the expansion of a pipeline going under said Burnaby Mountain. In the old days, KM would have paid for the Pinkertons, but the RCMP enforcement came from the policing budget of Burnaby, meaning that taxpayers are paying to KM to forge ahead with its profit-driven scheme, a project that has dire consequences as part of the Carbon Crime of The Century (Millennium, All Human History). No worries about loss of confidence in the force there, but that would imply that the confidence was there in the first place.

Worth noting: I have known members of the RCMP, all of whom have been responsible caring people, solicitous of their place in the community and the well-being of the people they are tasked with protecting. I hear, as we mostly likely have, people complain about police personnel, about civil servants, teacher, doctors, lawyers, dentists, politicians…there are quacks, cranks and crooks in all walks of life, and it is not my intention to tar broad swathes of any group of people with the sticky brush of shame. It is plain that many of our institutions need to be revisited.

Mrs. Thatcher quipped that “There is no alternative” to her brand of unfettered capitalism. This explains much of the malaise in several electoral jurisdictions where people are leaving the mainstream parties in droves: they simply stand for nothing in particular, if not for more of the same. This doesn’t necessarily show up in the campaign rhetoric, but officials are to be judged not on what they promise, but on what they deliver. In the case of the recent U.S. midterm elections, it seems plausible that the victory of the Republicans has little to do with the merits of the people or the ideas, but a lot to do with the unfulfilled promises of the 2008 election. In effect, the voters were sold a bill of goods and got more of the same, though with a very well-spoken figurehead. In effect, there wasn’t really a true alternative. I see that Bernie Sanders is challenging his hordes to be ready to take on the entrenched structures of capital and no one of prominence has the credibility that Sanders has built over the years. It would be interesting to get inside peoples’ heads to see what they thought of Sanders as a potential president, and we all know that his chances of getting elected are somewhat south of the Vegas minimum, but Bernie represents an alternative that has been there all along, that of rule of the people, by the people and for the people. This has become increasingly difficult to conceive of, let alone implement, as the creeping influence of big money has captured the security establishment, both houses of the legislative branch and a good part of the court system. It has been the hidden alternative, never discussed in polite society and certainly not a figure in the press and entertainment venues that constitute the daily fare of most of us, it has not been a coherent alternative, and it would seem that neither party in the GOP/Dem dichotomy (not so much), as well as the Labour/Tory pairing in the UK and the UMP/Socialist duo in France, presents a framework for that voice.

A further thought about the possible outbreak of something like democracy. This morning’s radio had a feature on an imaginary food truck and the promotion thereof by the buying of glowing reviews and FB likes and Twitter followers. The suppliers of the lies do it for the money. Does this remind anyone else of our political process, except that, instead of a phony grilled cheese sandwich truck, we are paying for bogus legislation and legislators.

Which One IsHiding The Pea?

An article in today’s Globe discusses a possible change in attitudes in a toney Nova Scotia town where, as they put it, the “gin and Jaguar” set is hosting a fundraiser on behalf on the current Liberal Leader, an unlikely occurrence given that the riding has elected only one Liberal in the last several decades. The Globe points out that this occurred in the context of the decimation of the Tories at the end of  the Mulroney reign, a grace period that lasted exactly until the next election, and the precedent is somewhat portentous for the rest of us: we should recall that Chrétien was elected on a platform of killing the GST, cancelling the helicopter contract and revoking NAFTA, and we all know how that turned out. This is basically a case of “here we go again”. A vast number of people might be disenchanted with the high handed, rather dictatorial style of Mr. Harper, and the anti-progressive and downright nasty way in which he rains on peoples’ parades and pulls the underpinnings out from under Canadian society. There are many rumblings about doing whatever it takes to rid Ottawa of the blight of CONservative government, including cross-party cooperation and strategic voting, as well as a concerted effort to get out the non-Con vote. In the face of all this effort, all the stirring of the electoral pot, and the strident calls to action, it’s hard to feature that the election of a government run by either of the other party leaders will be a great deal different. Both Trudeau and Mulcair seem wedded to the regimen of free trade documents that are currently blitzing the negotiating set, what with TISA,TPP, CETA, FIPPA and who knows what else might be emanating from the back rooms of the corporate dream factory, and it may be that Canadians don’t have the stomach for a platform that would reestablish some semblance of sovereignty for Canada and an economy that works for Canadians at home while working on diplomatic and economic initiatives abroad that would make staying home a viable option for all those TFWs, refugees, and whatever offshored jobs might be lost in the call centres of the underprivileged world. Canadians may not be capable of the adjustments in the way we live that would ensure that we use resources in a prudent and sustainable way, but, in any case, it seems unlikely that any of that will happen behind and of Doors 1, 2, or 3. The sad fact is that our current crop of leaders are all likely to lead us off a fiscal, social and environmental cliff, even though they may recognize that there are great minds telling us collectively that we need to re-educate ourselves quickly and act on our newly-gained tenets of wisdom. Would Messers Harper, Trudeau, and Mulcair be up to the challenge, once elected, of initiating that educational process? I would wager not, and not expect to get a lot of takers for that wager.

Had a few thoughts yesterday,but they didn’t get onto paper because of a houseful of kids, grandkids, and in-laws for a low-grade Easter Egg hunt and dinner, all very jolly, loud, and full of movement. But it was April 20, a day of portent on several levels. Of course, the stoners claim it as their own. I think I’ll stick with wine as my complement to coffee, but I will opine that we spend far too much time repressing the stoners’ urges to escape.

It also marks the birthday of Adolph Hitler, a man who continues to mark our lives and haunt our society, not only through the memory of the Holocaust, but also for what his friend Benito Mussolini is said to have quipped: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” This, of course, is precisely the point of Thomas Piketty’s recent musings on Capital In The Twenty-Frist Century.

I seem to remember that it was in honour of Hitler’s birthdate that two young men in Colorado unleashed this:

But my favourite Four-Twenty thoughts go to my parents who fell in love in 1945 and never fell out again, a very special relationship that weathered six children, several changes of venue and a slow climb out of the splendid squalor of self-imposed poverty (through rejection of lucrative but compromising employment) to relative comfort and recognition as architect and potter and as a pair of pretty committed activists, working for something like racial and gender equality, human rights, ecological preservation and enhancement and a host of other less lofty, but no less deserving, causes. Part of their long infatuation with each other was the practice of celebrating multiple anniversaries, their civil wedding (1946), their church wedding (1964, with all their little bastards present) and a host of other occasions, most of them likely relating to carnal acts of some sort (not a discussion that we ever had). I recall an April 20 when I was still in knee pants, but reading a lot of history, particularly the Second World War because they had lots of neat fighter aircraft, when we were all on the verge of being banished to another part of the house so that the parents could have a quiet moment of celebration together, and I had the silly temerity to point out that this was not only one of their anniversaries, but that it was also Hitler’s birthdate. They took it stoically, but it was clearly not a notion that they cared to contemplate.