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The "Third Way" in liberal politics involves saying things that working people love, but doing things that sociopathic plutocrats love. It works …right up until voters notice that you're not doing the things. That realisation breeds cynicism and fury and paves the way for fascist strongmen.
It's really ugly, and no one does it uglier than Canada's Liberal Party. Remember that time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched with Greta Thunberg to protest Canada's shitty, planet-wrecking climate policies?
Gee, Justin – it sure would be great if you could have a word with the fella who decided to bail out America's doomed tar sands pipeline and vowed to pump and torch 173,000,000,000 barrels of Canadian oil:
Trudeau's "Third Way" eventually proved so unpopular that he opened the door to an authoritarian takeover of Canada by an otherwise totally unelectable, Trump-aligned far-right maniac. The only thing that saved Canada from a fate dumber than Trump was Trump himself, who wouldn't stop promising to make Canada the 51st state, an idea that was even more repellent to Canadians than five more years of Third Way bullshit:
And boy did Canadians find a Third Way bullshitter to move into 24 Sussex Drive: Mark Carney, an austerity-crazed central banker who will endorse incredibly progressive policies…provided he never has to do any of them. When it comes to championing working Canadians while royally screwing them, Carney is the only Canadian politician capable of out-Trudeauing Trudeau.
But we shouldn't reject Carneyism due to the mere fact that Carney refuses to deliver Carneyism. The problem with Carneyism isn't Carneyism itself – the problem with Carneyism is Mark Carney.
Take Carney's policy promise to charge US tech giants a 3% tax, a move that would defeat their incredibly clever gambit of pretending to be Irish and thus not owing any tax, anywhere:
That was a good policy! So was Carney's "elbows up" policy of sticking it to America in retaliation for Trump's flagrant violation of CUSMA, the free trade agreement negotiated by (checks notes) one Donald J Trump:
Unfortunately, Mark Carney didn't get the memo from (checks notes) Mark Carney, and the very instant Trump arranged his face into his trademarked confused scowl, Carney dropped the tax, apologising profusely:
In the last days of the Trudeau government, the Liberals passed a bill that transformed Canada's Competition Bureau from the weakest antitrust regulator in the world into one of the strongest (on paper, at least):
It's impossible to overstate how useless the Competition Bureau was before this bill passed. In its entire history, the Bureau had only challenged three mergers, and had never successfully challenged a merger. Canada's do-nothing competition enforcers allowed the country to be captured by Made-in-Canada oligarchs whose ripoffs and abuses would make the Hudson's Bay Company blush:
If Canada was ever going to be a real country (and not just two monopolists and a mining company in a trenchcoat) it needed a serious competition enforcer. Nominally, it has one, thanks to the 2024 Competition Act. The only problem was Carney, who made sweeping real-terms cuts to the Bureau's funding. Thanks to Carney, Canada has a Competition Bureau with all the powers it needs to save Canada from its oligarchs – but it can't afford to do any of that stuff.
Monopolists rip Canadians off like crazy. We even have a guy who mistook Les Miz for an HBR case-study, and embarked upon the country's worst-ever price-fixing campaign, gouging the country on bread prices:
You don't have to be a monopolist to steal from Canadians. Ripping off Canadians is the game everyone can play! Consumer protection agencies are incredible value for money, saving the public hundreds for every dollar that we spend on them. Guess who just eliminated Canada's consumer protection agency?
Oh, to be a scammer in Mark Carney's Canada! Whatever Galen Weston doesn't steal is yours for the taking!
But again, the problem isn't Carneyism – the problem is Carney. Carneyism is great. Carneyism gave us that remarkable speech at Davos, where Mark Carney declared a "rupture" in the US-dominated global system of trade and politics, promising a future of "minilateralism" in which "middle powers" like Canada band together for mutual prosperity:
If only Mark Carney had been there to hear those stirring words! He might have understood what a fucking insane idea it is to turn over Canada's military to Palantir, the company that, more than any other, has fused itself with the Trump regime's domestic program of ethnic cleansing and its international program of extraterritorial aggression:
Carneyism isn't merely a rejection of the old international order. Domestically, Carneyism promises technocratic excellence, skilled leadership that delivers first-class services for the Canadian people. This is a great pitch! It got Mamdani elected, and Mamdani's sincere pursuit of governmental excellence thrills New Yorkers in new ways every day:
Here, too, Carneyism is entirely sound – the problem is Carney's vicious anti-Carneyism and his plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with AI chatbots. It's not just that chatbots are terrible substitutes for skilled public officials, they're also controlled by US corporations that are entirely beholden to the Trump regime:
Unlike Mark Carney, I support Carneyism. Carneyism promises protection for Canadians, from monopolists and mad emperors, petty thieves and potholes. But Carney himself ardently opposes these policies. This will only get worse when the AI bubble pops and vaporises a third of the US stock market, spreading contagion to global capital markets. That will be Carney's cue to roll out his favourite go-to tactic: austerity.
We cannot afford this. Austerity is how we lose the country. Austerity – more than any other force – drives working people into the arms of fascists:
The thing is, Mark Carney has shown his political opponents how to beat him: just embrace Carneyism. The things Carney says are incredibly popular. Now we just need to elect someone who'll do them.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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i hope ya'll are ready for your IDs to be leaked online when the inevitable data breach occurs as it has in every country that has done this idiocy. identity theft who? well, soon it'll be identity theft you. yay!
and then it'll slowly expand. from social media to gaming platforms. want to play your steam games? now you need to sign up for a credit card. want to mess around with coding on github? hand over your government id, sucker! want to set up a profile on your brand new computer? oops, sorry, your operating system now needs you to doxx yourself.
to those who have been paying attention to how this nonsense has been shaping up in other countries, you know.
you have also been watching that happen.
to those who haven't, haha, where have you been?
also: this doesn't work. almost every browser has a VPN built in. most kids know how to trick face scans. (and some adults with babyfaces have to to be categorized correctly.)
a better way would be a "children on board" package offered by ISPs where they provide step-by-step instructions or programs for the parents to set up their routers to block certain sites, to set up their devices to provide daily updates on their children's activity, etc. those things ALREADY EXIST, but i guess my generation (millennials) are too stupid to figure it out?
alternatively, if they're so worried about the algorithms, pressure those companies to change it. after all, it effects adults too. or do we not matter? you know those kids will eventually become adults, right? and then they'll be effected by the almighty algorithm's evil evil ways? perhaps even more-so because they haven't been allowed to develop a tolerance to it.
you know you can teach children how to avoid that influence? kids are dumb. no one is born knowing things. education fixes that.
japan is the only country doing this right.
oh wait, no. we know this isn't about the kids already. silly me.
mr "AI for all" carney wants to provide these companies with your data. data is money after all. "but this is kinew, a NDP," you might say - sure. but carney has expressed similar sentiment about looking into forcing identity verification upon the average internet user.
and of course the sites will be using the same companies that routinely get hacked or breached.
it's a security risk. they want you to risk your privacy and security.
Hey. If you're one of the 17 people on here who live in Alberta please fill out this survey from the provincial government about regulating "sexually explicit content" in school libraries and tell them in no uncertain terms how dangerous this shit is
ugh one thing about kirk ive been thinking abt (cuz of city coucillor drama) that idk if a lot of americans know about, is the fact that he was the direct cause of a rise residential school denial (so fucking genocide denial) and that cdn First Nations creators and our allies were harassed non stop for months about how "no bodies were found" despite several Nations already laying hundreds of children to rest
the reason i've been fighting w city council is bc they for whatever fucking reason decided to comment on his assassination (still dk why, we are like a fucking mid-sized town in ontario) and only one of them recognized now awful he was, and how his words were NOT just words, and the rest of the councillors are bullying her like literal fucking children
Canada surpassed the record for area burned by wildfires in a single year Monday as hundreds of fires continued to blaze in almost every pro
Canada surpassed the record for area burned by wildfires in a single year Monday as hundreds of fires continued to blaze in almost every province and territory.
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported Monday afternoon that 76,129 square kilometres of forest and other land has burned since Jan. 1. That exceeds the previous record set in 1989 of 75,596 square kilometres, according to the National Forestry Database.
Last week federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said he wasn’t "looking to break any records" but acknowledged it was likely coming. "Unfortunately the fire season this year started earlier and has been more widespread across the country than in recent memory," he said.
It took less than six months to surpass the previous record for an entire year. And in 1989, more than 11,000 different fires combined to create the total, with an average size of about seven square kilometres. This year, there have been less than 3,000 fires so far, but they have averaged about 26 square kilometres in size. [...]
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Socialists, communists and the labour movement are responsible for winning the reforms that built the lifestyle that the Right likes to romanticize. Then they sold out the working class by adopting neoliberalism which has wrought destruction and inequality. Fascism is not the solution.
Lengthy info/media thread of what happened in Trinity Bellwood's Park park in Toronto
Around 4am today (22/06/2021), hundreds of officers from the Toronto Police Service, city workers and private security descended upon a houseless encampment located in Trinity Bellwood's Park. The residents were essentially given an ultimatum that they could either pack up and leave within the hour, relinquish their belongings and be put-up in a shelter-hotel, or be detained.
Everything's going to be collapsed below, as this is going to be a lot of media.
Residents within the neighbourhood began occupying the park immediately to prevent the residents from being evicted.
City workers erected a blue fence which has been manned by the private security agency hired. The original group of protestors are largely trapped inside the perimeter. Press and legal observers were denied access to the interior of the park.
As a crowd began to grow outside of the fence, TPS intentionally trampled the crowd from horseback in order to prevent the fence from being knocked over.
The crowd grew to a couple hundred, as residents have been coming in droves to show solidarity and disrupt the operation.
Cops armed with AR-15s are patrolled the perimeter, alongside unmarked vans who are id-ing the protestors.
Tear gas, pepper spray and rubber munitions had all been deployed, and "several" arrests have been made. Among the arrests were a pregnant woman, and this man who's being carried from the park haphazardly and unconscious.
Construction equipment brought in to bulldoze the camp.
City Twitter account going on damage-control for arresting houseless people. Don't have images of them, but the TPS also deployed drones for ID-ing protestors.
The residents of the park have officially asked the community to stand-down, and are cooperating with the city. If you're local, do not head down atm, as the TPS are still doing sweeps on horseback, and you will probably be detained if you enter the park tonight.
If you aren't outraged, then you just aren't paying attention
In the last 10 years, rent for a one- bedroom apartment in Toronto has increased 132% from an average of $790/month to $1833/month, while minimum wage has increased only 47% from $9.50/hour to $14.00/hour. In order to afford a one-bedroom apartment, you need to work full time making at least $33.70
My sister has been living in a shitty tiny one-bedroom apartment for a long time, before the rent prices got super crazy. All the other units prices pretty much doubled, and her rent goes up something like $20 each year. The landlord has even started harassing her and trying to find any reason to evict her so they can rent it to someone else for much more money. My mom even suspects that they are messing with the water pressure for the unit. It’s fucking ridiculous.
But of course my sister can’t move. She’d love to move, she’s wanted to for a while, but who tf can afford $2000 a month for rent, especially when food and transportation in this city is so expensive as well? Once upon a time there were many 16 year-olds with their own apartment (myself included) but now I’m meeting people way in their late 20s who live at home cuz they can’t afford to do otherwise. This shit is crazy.
What is Toronto doing about the high cost of rent? Getting paid by Google so that Google can setup a high-tech neighborhood that no one but the elite will be able to afford to live in, while Google collects everybody’s private information from the gazzilion sensors, cameras, and recording devices that they plan to install in public spaces and private buildings. (No, for real - look up SideWalk Labs). One month’s rent before utilities should cost the same as four months tuition at college. A young person with no family can’t afford to go to school full time and rent an apartment. I’ve been homeless in Toronto during the winter - it’s not something people should go through, especially if juggling school and/or work. And then there are those who have kids. If you can’t afford rent and food, then the province takes your kids away. Some of you might say “then just move somewhere cheaper” - that cost a lot of money to do too, and there’s no grantee you’ll find work there either. This is a coordinated attack on the 99%.
