Category: Racism

Ukraine update

Putin and Xi have finished their meeting and sadly, China’s ‘suggestions’ for ‘peace’ are basically Russian eating Ukraine and shitting out grain shipments and rooting around for Black Sea oil while jacking off to dreams of Romanov imperial splendour, opulence and supremacy.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Statistics agency: Ukraine‘s GDP down 31.4% in 4th quarter of 2022. Ukraine‘s GDP fell by 31.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to a 30.8% drop in the third quarter, according to the State Statistics Service.

464 children – have been killed by Russia in Ukraine.

934 – injured to varying degrees of severity.

150,000 – were kidnapped and moved to Russia. – Source unknown but it matches everything else I’ve seen.

PLEASE NOTE 11000 CHILDREN HAVE DIED IN THE YEMEN CONFLICT. (In other words brown children are getting killed too; it’s just that Ukraine was twice the land of my foremothers and I feel a connection.) I wasn’t able to figure out which proportion of the 52000 civilians killed in the Tigray conflict (Eritrea) have been children. And of course there’s more than one way to run a genocide; China sterilizing Uyghur women at the rate of 250/100000 <—- insanely high for a country with a PLUMMETING BIRTH RATE, and budgeting enough money to sterilize one third of the women of Uyghur origin in a single municipality in a single year is also horrific. It’s easier to prevent kids than waste them I guess. Source, Vox.

Maxim Tucker reports:

In some battles, like Vuhledar and Bakhmut, the Russians have a 1:1 ratio of killed to wounded, Nato says. Ukraine’s medevac procedures have helped it achieve 1:9, KIA to WIA according to statistics it shared with Nato. Half of those rescued will be able to return to active duty.

Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, I’m glad I’m not a Russian medic. This is Putin treating his troops with the ultimate disrespect. Medevac must be a joke to them. Ukraine at least treats every combatant as precious and the difference in how their commanders treat them must be VERY OBVIOUS to the guys taking fire.

Wagner Group is apparently having to release half of the soldiers they have left because they fulfilled their contracts and managed to survive the meat-grinder. So on top of everything else, Russia’s going to have another call up, and they’ll probably be sending reform school teens and the worst scum of the Russian prison system. Good thing the first thing you hear from the Ukrainians is how to surrender without getting killed…

quietly productive

I emptied and ran the dishwasher, wiped down the hellhole surfaces in the kitchen closest to the compost buckets and got most of the rain of tomato out of the microwave, trained the cat, made and thoroughly enjoyed a coffee, possibly wrote a song, did my wordle and lumosity training, clipped Buster’s claws, made ‘meat and potatoes’ for lunch, sent a thousand words to mOm, figured out what my next couple of scenes are (although I’m not putting pressure on myself to write) and I generally luxuriated in the life of a retired person. I took my meds at the right time. I stayed hydrated. I put in eyedrops before I went to bed.

That’s what I’m supposed to do, right?

Watched the Netflix film the Pale Blue Eye. Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe was wonderful. Harry Melling’s grandad was the second Doctor Who, who knew. Gillian Anderson’s bizarre mom to a bizarre family was …. bizarre and hypercreepy.  Christian Bale as the haunted detective was quite effective. I really enjoyed the script. Unlike many scripts (many, many; hear me whine) set in historical times, it neither gracelessly dropped modern slang like horseshit into a griddle nor overdid the ceremony and style of days of speech in days of yore. I didn’t hear a single anachronism. Do you have any idea how pleasant that is for a writer? I mean there were many constructions that would likely not have happened in the 1830s, but nothing so far from contemporary usage that it was repellent. For that alone, huit sur dix.

Jeff Bezos, may the intertwined Fates of a thousand cultures give him his reward, has, through Amazon, bought an Indian publishing house called Westland Publishing. It is one of the few publishing houses in India that has the wit and courage to publish ANYTHING that challenges Hindutva. (Spoiler alert, I think that all countries are idiotic, but once you have a settled state that calls itself a democracy, you should perhaps not support a political ideology that FIGHTS LIKE HELL AGAINST PLURALISTIC DEMOCRACY BECAUSE HINDUS ARE JUST BETTER, KK? Plus the caste system is groovy, men own women’s bodies, marital rape is super cool, cops can kill women who report rapes after raping them again, and Muslims are arson targets) OKAY maybe I’m being a racist asshole, oh look, I’m not. I really don’t think that China and India holding hands over kicking the shit out of Muslims is a good look for either country; people are dying in riots pogroms and political reeducation camps in both countries. Anyway, Bezos is literally supporting global fascism by doing that and we already knew he was a cruel billionaire, but HONESTLY can’t he just fucking stop.

Anyway, the closure of the publishing house means that hundreds of titles are no longer available. Absolutely no word on how and when they could be available elsewhere. There’s more than one way to be fash. Having the money to buy good things that support democracy and discourse, and destroy them (huLLLLLO Elongated Greaserat) is fascist.

a six year old is in custody for shooting his teacher. The cops didn’t arrest the person responsible for leaving a loaded pistol out. Everything you need to know about gun culture in the US in one story. (from CNN website, 6-year-old in custody after shooting teacher in Virginia, police chief says By Amanda Musa and Jennifer Feldman, CNN
Updated 7:19 AM EST, Sat January 7, 2023)

 

Taiwan’s little EU problem and other things

  1. So the EU ambassador to China, a Spaniard, has announced that the Spanish government’s position on Taiwan (peaceful reunification for 1 China) is actually the EU position. It’s not. Horror across the internet this morning at this blatant contradiction of the majority stakeholder view across the EU.
  2. I’m so itchy I’m having trouble sleeping. My tear ducts seem to be blocked up too, and my eyes are sticking shut.
  3. Started working on Part II – 73 words so far.
  4. Three shootings in Toronto last night, one dead, two gravely injured, shooter or shooters still at large.
  5. Words cannot describe how much I’m hoping – and I’m an abolitionist – that Steve Bannon goes to jail in the same country where someone said that the economy would fall apart if jails didn’t contain almost free labour.
  6. Putin says Russia’s high tech sector is facing ‘colossal’ problems due to sanctions.
  7. They’re emptying the jails and putting the dregs of Russian society at the front, according to sources inside Russia.
  8. 110 degrees F in Fort Worth TX today that’s 43 degrees C. The grid in TX is teetering thanks to Repulsigan policies and chronic underspending by ERCOT on maintenance. Bad things are going to happen, it’s like sunshine and gravity.
  9. Wonderful Nova program about the JWST and the first pictures. I knew it was a hellaciously complex and overbudget project, but just HOW complex and HOW overbudget was kind of heartstopping, so thank science it worked. Ain’t nobody going to fix it if it quits.
  10. CBC is reporting lightheartedly that repeated COVID infections will be the norm and don’t pose a problem and this is directly counter to every reputable clinician and epidemiologist that I follow stating loudly and clearly that every repeat infection raises the spectre of disability from Long Covid. Fuck them for saying that.
  11. With Jeff’s kind assistance, I have taken Otto to the krankenhaus. I will receive word on Thursday.
  12. Keith reports that Jim is doing much better.
  13. I have finally seen “The Trouble With Harry”. Damn but John Forsythe was hotter than August in his prime, and what a freaking voice.
  14. 40 degree C weather in Britain. Monuments and bridges are at risk of cracking, damage and failure. Brits don’t take heat seriously so the betting is it will be super hard on the disabled and elderly. Australians and Americans on twitter are trying to help with inexpensive advice. From today’s twitter: In more “country totally prepared for hot weather” news: Blackpool Victoria Hospital (note, in the UK) has propped its doors open to keep the building cool, but now the hospital is full of seagulls  AND HERE’S ANOTHER ONE “SKY NEWS REPORTER, CITING MILITARY SOURCE: UK ROYAL AIR FORCE HAS HALTED FLIGHTS IN AND OUT OF ITS LARGEST AIR BASE IN THE UK BECAUSE THE “RUNWAY HAS MELTED” IN THE HOT WEATHER and ANOTHER:

    UK airport suspends all flights as heatwave melts runway tarmac

    A spokesperson for Luton Airport said: “Following today’s high temperatures, a surface defect was identified on the runway.”

  15. My dad does not like seagulls. Not in his aircraft engines and definitely not in his hospitals. NO WORD ON HOW HE FEELS ABOUT MELTY TARMAC
  16. The ERs at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital in Clearwater and South Okanagan General Hospital in Oliver are on diversion due to staff shortages.
  17. let’s talk about everything that’s wrong with this article. First off, fuck that family for booking a Disney cruise in Alaska during a pandemic. Second, Air Canada SAID it was going to be cancelling flights left and right at the end of June. Did they not get the memo? What did they think was going to happen. THIRD their daughter HAD COVID BEFORE THEY STARTED TRAVELLING or she wouldn’t have popped symptoms on the fourth day…..they would have ended up on a boat with a sick child anyway. How the fuck is that a vacation? fourth they got treated terribly by Air Canada and had to sleep in airports and it’s like HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THE NEWS? EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM CITED IN THIS ARTICLE has been part of the nightly news since the travel season started. There’s NO ROOM in the current Air Canada schedule for aircraft going mechanical.
  18. Maybe Roger Waters of Pink Floyd is a more important figure and musician than the Weeknd and Drake but why the fuck would he say so in public? I’ll tell you why!! HE DIDN’T GET REVIEWED IN THE MAJOR PAPERS! Oh, you poor poor man.  that’s get off my lawn style crankiness and RACISM. PS I hold no brief for either of them and Drake’s a creepy asshole who macks on minors and makes for great memes but HE’S A HOMETOWN CHILD IN TORONTO so of course it was a big deal. Not understanding the local politics doesn’t make you a likeable figure dude.
  19. Time to back up your computers, earth’s about to get smacked hard by a coronal mass ejection.  Radio and GPS disruption expected, low latitudes aurorae, first thing tomorrow. Chances of being an x event is 10% but we’ll get something for sure….
  20. WHO confirms a Marburg outbreak in Ghana.
  21. Zelenskyy remains pissed at Trudeau, line forms on the left pal.
  22. July 2022 heat dome temperature gradient europa
  23. Above is the atmospheric ‘ pot lid’ on Europa.
  24. NASA’s ‘climate spiral’ video.
  25. SO ITCHY

jesus parkour christ

The ever left Paul Blinkhorn shares this gem on twitter today, to which my response was candid and unhappy. The National Front, which grew out of the homegrown fascists of the 20s and 30s and still exists in the UK although with neither seats nor electoral results, literally showed a platform INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THAT OF CONTEMPORARY TORIES. Except for the capital punishment, and they only left that one in place because live prisoners are more of a revenue stream for Tory prison contract lobbyists than dead ones, and I wish I was exaggerating.

The next time someone asks you what is an Overton window, you can tap this post and say THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

The Smalls

Robert Smalls: American politician, publisher, businessman and marine pilot, who rescued a number of enslaved persons by boat.

The Inimitable Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G., he whose suit is in the entrance of the Music Museum in Seattle, (it is scary big, no kidding, I’ve seen it with me een) known to his momma as Christopher George Latore Wallace

Christian Smalls – the man who led the drive to unionize an Amazon warehouse. The Amazon execs are reputed to have said of him, in assessing his chances, “He is not smart or articulate.”

And that is PRECISELY why Amazon is going to lose.

beautiful day for a pap smear

So I saw the doc, got a pap smear, had to wait an hour and a half. “Everything looks fine down there” what a relief eh.

Something odd came out of the overnight BP study. A couple of hours after I went to sleep that night my BP crashed and stayed there for about two hours. I mean crashed; literally so low that I’d be hospitalized. I guess I just have to be a weirdo. Otherwise the drugs seem to be doing their job and I’m not in Sky High About To Pop a Clog territory any more.

Jeff gave me a no-SMS-card phone so I have a calculator and alarm and game platform and I have now killed both of the chargers he loaned me so I have to replace them.

Got my meds re-upped – yet another change, this time because the drug is literally so old the drug company doesn’t want to make it in that formulation anymore, sounds like me. Anyway that’s set up and I should have enough prescriptions to cover me during an earthquake. I’ll be going off the inderal eventually. Very glad I’ve added vitamin c to the mix of pills I take every morning – as is often the case my teeth hurt less.

Today maybe I’ll get that bloodwork done, but it’s more likely because I have to go to the same building for my prescription,

Katie, Alex, Ryker and I are going to travel to Victoria at some point. This means that M&D have to re-jig their visiting from other relatives which I kinda feel bad about but it would have been hella worse if the unvaxxed baby breathed all over the immunocompromised elder, so at least everyone involved has consent. We’re also going to do RATs before we leave to ensure none of us are actively illin’.

I am not going to comment about the assault at the Oscars because as far as I can tell, with maybe one exception, every single white person whose comments I’ve seen has applied all the intersectionality of non-Euclidean geometry and all the nuance of a cast iron frying pan flung across the kitchen. Given that I am not the great white hope (sarcasm alert…. sarcasm & POOR CHOICE OF PHRASING alert) of contemporary anti-racism activities and thought, I won’t do better and therefore, if you want to know how I feel about it (I have three main points to make) you can ask me in person, and of your kindness, wear the rainsuit.

I am not going to comment as much about the Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. I’m against it; I continue to donate and send letters and whatnot in the background; Putin won’t give up until he’s dead or deposed; Canada is as involved as it reasonably can be and maybe even more so anyplace it can get away with it; Russia and India and China are now doing a pavane and in the end China will crush Russia. In terms of will, planning, execution and numbers, China can’t do anything else.

The suffering of the Ukrainian people, and the Russians dragged into this war by violent paranoid old bigots, is not imaginable by those not experiencing it; we uphold their courage and denounce the frauds who’ve started this terrible slaughter.

6646 words, still waiting on further oomph to finish it. Haven’t seen any kudos yet this morning. I got the wordle in 5 this morning, but it was a complete bear of a word.

 

 

Roundup of news I cannot use

Queen Elizabeth was hospitalized for tests on Wednesday. Some wag on twitter was exclaiming that she couldn’t possibly have it lined up to die on Remembrance Sunday. Personally I think she’ll at least make her mother’s advanced age, she drinks less than her mom Mary did.

The fucking TURNER DIARIES a horrific pile of racist trash about white supremacists attacking Washington, like that never happened, is carried by the venerable Powell’s Books hq’d in Portland. Now, candidly, I wouldn’t mind because I’m not keen on censorship, but the fucking REVIEW OF THE BOOK is stomach churning.

Because ALMOST FOR SURE Powells is going to get fucking roasted and take it down, I’ve copied it in jpg form.

To say that this is glossing over a) one of the worst novels ever written in English which b) shows the protagonists killing Black people like they were houseflies and c) CONTINUES TO INSPIRE GUNTOTING FASCIST SYMPS is putting it small. Read the Wikipedia article if you want to see what they’re window dressing for.

DISGUSTING.

Canada FINALLY has a vaccine passport. I don’t mean to fly any more but I would like to see my friends in the US of A and this is a step forward.

ALEX IS COMING AT 4 PM TODAY.

Barometer so low I thought my head would explode yesterday. I couldn’t get anything done I was so distracted. Paul took me for a short walk but the kids on the school grounds were too plentiful, running on the path, and Paul needed the washroom so it was abbreviated.

burgers and shakes

I am very much enjoying the diminution of the heat.

Listening to some of my fave music on Youtube this morning

 

I prefer the extended remix Shriekback. 

More ‘new wave’ – the Headboys Experiments

Owl and Cat and Catalonian rock and roll

And who could forget this Animusic classic. I must have played this a hundred times the year it came out.

Ah, Sloan…. the floaty guitar over the ominous bass, the restrained emotion of the video.  also the THIS AIN’T POLY IT’S CHEATING vibe

 

 

Emergency Management BC didn’t even try to CALL OR CONTACT the local Indigenous in Lytton and environs until 24 HOURS AFTER THE FUCKING FIRE WIPED OUT THE TOWN

fuck systemic racism, sincerely

 

we got Burger Heaven burgers and shakes yesterday

 

no song today

I’ll get my shit together later, or maybe tomorrow.

Lovely… and I mean absolutely life-affirming and beautiful …. walk in Fraser Foreshore yesterday. We took it easy and stopped at every bench to look at the trees and the water. SO MANY songbirds, the forest just rang with their voices.

Fed Paul homemade greek salad, the last of the garbanzo stew and homemade lemonade for lunch, also got a financial errand run.

Katie DROPPED BY AFTER WORK yesterday, I felt like a celebrity was stopping by. Love her so much. She’s just starting to show, she should be off work by Jeff’s birthday.

Live your life like this internet toddler:

Today is Juneteenth. Do not be fooled. As long as Black and racialized people are being shot, unjustly imprisoned and deported in such horrifying numbers in the US, it doesn’t matter what feel-good holidays are signed into law. It’s just more Martin Luther King Day: white people get the day off and Black people get to work two shifts, while the Republicans are doing everything possible to remove their voting rights.

Tragedy in London

As far as I can tell I’m not reacting nearly as hard to the shot as I did the last time. There’s a hot raised spot on my arm but nothing like the last time.

I’m just so happy to be fully vaccinated. I CAN’T HURT SOMEONE UNINTENTIONALLY now. I can be disgusting and homicidal some other way I guess.

I have a new favourite dessert: cold home made rice pudding, done Jeff style (he prefers it more gooey than I do), with mascarpone layered on top and then home made chocolate sauce dribbled on top. I invented it last night and then promptly got up and ate another dish of it. LOL.  Possibly I should run the dishwasher now before everything gets too crusty.

The Muslim family killed by a 20 year old driver in London ONT …. I have few words.

– Salman Afzaal, 46 physiotherapist – Madiha Salman, 44 PhD student in Civil engineering – Yumna Salman, 15, grade 9 student – Fayez Salman, 9 – Grandmother, 74, family ‘pillar’

Struck down FOR WHAT REASON? Other than bigotry and hatred and ignorance.

 

one massive ball

Part of genocide is thinking that one Indigenous person from x point in Canada is like an Indigenous person from y point.

After all these years CBC still thinks that ‘the Indigenous community’ is a convenient monolithic block. It speaks with one voice, sees with one eye, dances with one foot, etc etc. Please don’t roll up Indigenous communities in one mass for your own convenience.

This is me in response to the CBC talking about ‘the Indigenous community’ response to finding 215 murdered children in Kamloops.

Sad tidings

Finding hundreds of children’s bodies at the Kamloops residential school ground was a ghastly piece of news to get yesterday.

There are many burial places like it. More horror.

I’m just sad about it. Indigenous people on twitter have asked white people to just be still for a while and not make it about them.

Get the babies home. That’s all I can say.