The Orange Revolution, Toronto

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Canada was the first country to recognize the Ukraine when it declared its independance. As I write this I am still in Toronto, living in the heart of a Ukranian community, so I thought I ought to write a little about what's going on. This rainy morning I decided to go for walk to see what people in the neighborhood had to say about the recent elections back home.



I live next door to the Ukranian Canadian Art Foundation, to put my location into context.
These signs were taped to a van just up the street from me.
As is the norm when people ask for democracy, police were everywhere.
Utterly convinced that Yushchencko won the election, contrary to the “official” numbers.

Part of the issue is that the Ukraine is a “new democracy”, having gained its independence only a decade and a half ago, and only recently ditching communism. Because of this, idealism is running high since they've been told that democracy means power to the people and many thought that this election could give them “the perfect leader”. There's a good MeFi discussion with loads of links here, but to put it in simple terms, the Ukrainian election was only slightly less fraudulent than the US election, but because idealism is still high in the Ukraine, people are freaking out over fraud.

As you may know, the Ohio recount back in the US just got nixxed, and the University of Berkeley's study has gotten almost no press — you know, the one showing that Bush was fraudulently awarded as many as a quarter million extra votes in Florida alone, half of those being what are called “ghost votes” where the e-voting system simply gives Bush extra votes for people who don't even exist. Given that objections to the fraud of 2000 got nowhere, it's no surprise that Americans have apathetically accepted this coup… I'm not sure there are many people left with the backbone for liberty.

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"Nun, Volk steh auf, und Sturm brich los!"

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

The English Left maintain that the German people Americans have lost faith in victory. I ask you: Do you believe with the Fhrer and us Bush and the Republican Party in the final total victory of the German people Democracy? I ask you: Are you resolved to follow the Fhrer Bush through thick and thin to victory, and are you willing to accept the heaviest personal burdens in the fight for victory?

Second, The English Left say that the German American people are tired of fighting. I ask you: Are you ready to follow the Fhrer Bush as the phalanx of the homeland, standing behind the fighting army and to wage war with wild determination through all the turns of fate until victory is ours? Third: The English Left maintain that the German American people have no desire any longer to accept the government's growing demands for war work. I ask you: Are you and the German American people willing to work, if the Fhrer Bush orders, 10, 12 and if necessary 14 hours a day and to give everything for victory?

Fourth: The English Left maintain that the German American people are resisting the government's total war measures. They do not want total war, but capitulation! Never! Never! Never! I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?

Fifth: The English Left maintain that the German American people have lost faith in the Fhrer Bush. I ask you: Is your confidence in the Fhrer Bush greater, more faithful and unshakable than ever before? Are you absolutely and completely ready to follow him wherever he goes and do all that is necessary to bring the war to a victorious end?

“Fhrer Bush command, we follow!”

Sixth, I ask you : Are you ready from now on to give your full strength to provide the Middle Eastern Front with the men and munitions it needs to give Bolshevism Islamists the death blow?

Seventh, I ask you: Do you take a holy oath to the front that the homeland stands firm behind them, and that you will give them everything then need to win the victory?

Eighth, I ask you: Do you, especially you women, want the government to do all it can to encourage German American women to put their full strength at work to support the war effort, and to release men for the front whenever possible, thereby helping the men at the front?

Ninth, I ask you: Do you approve, if necessary, the most radical measures against a small group of shirkers and black marketeers who pretend there is peace in the middle of war and use the need of the nation for their own selfish purposes? Do you agree that those who harm the war effort should lose their heads?

Tenth and lastly, I ask you: Do you agree that above all in war, according to the National Socialist Republican Party platform, the same rights and duties should apply to all, that the homeland should bear the heavy burdens of the war together, and that the burdens should be shared equally between high and low and rich and poor?

I have asked; you have given me your answers. You are part of the people, and your answers are those of the German people. You have told our enemies what they needed to hear so that they will have no false illusions or ideas.

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Image Update + Economic Comments

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

I've just posted an image update with just under 1,700 new pictures for today. I'm sorry, I don't think the cover model has an IAM page (correct me if I'm wrong) but you've seen his full Japanese body suit in the galleries before. As always, thanks to him and all the other contributors for their help on today's update.

The rest of this entry about the future so stop reading now if you don't give a damn about your flaming demise. Some rather disturbing predictions came out from the folks over at Morgan Stanley… here's what their chief economist had to say (more):

America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic "armageddon". America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded. Household debt is at record levels ... a "spectacular wave of bankruptcies" is possible.

None of this is a secret — Morgan Stanley is not some conspiracy-driven anti-capitalist collective — and anyone who understands the basics of economics sees it not only happening, but getting hugely worse due to Bush's reckless spending platforms. Where it gets “funny” is when you look at them from the start (as in y2k onward), they almost seem designed to drive up these problems, as nonsensical as that must seem at first. While one might be able to explain market fluctuations and downturns, trying to explain Bush's apparently suicidally indulgent economic policies is not so immediately simple.

That said, let's try and explain why Bush is doing this, and why instead of lowering spending as he promised during the “election“, he's continuing to increase US spending and debt levels.

Skipping over “he's an idiot” (more) or “he's a religious nut” (more) type explanations, there is only only one good reason for Bush to take the economic steps he's taking that actually serve the interests of his constituents who as you may remember he described jokingly as “the haves and the have-mores”. The end effect of a “spectacular wave of bankruptcies” is not that America itself evaporates and becomes Afghanistan. The end effect is that most private property and assets (and even public assets as they are privatized) are transferred into fewer and fewer — and richer and richer — hands.

I believe the current economic downturn is designed to steal the remaining assets of the poor and middle class into the hands of the ultra-rich ruling class, who will be left with perfectly legal slave ownership (and lives of luxury) as a result. They'll have additional power to do so because of Bush's only-for-the-rich tax cuts and corporate welfare policies stuffing their coffers pre-collapse… Unless of course the Americans have the courage and sense for liberty of the French that is (more), which unfortunately I doubt in these beaten-down and intellectually oppressed modern times.

“Parea non servin,” you say? Somehow I doubt it…

I've included the above picture mostly to make people not feel like total crap after reading all this. But please think about what I'm saying, and feel free to double check it for yourself.
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Before and after

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Now, I'm no friend of Saddam's, but Baghdad wasn't a bad looking city a few years ago. I've posted pictures here before from the 90s that included advertising billboards, single women walking freely, modern cars, Coke machines, and so on. These ones below are a little older pictures, but you get the idea. It's important for people to understand that when they hear about Falluja or wherever being bombed, that it's a city just like the one they may live in.

For comparison, you can take a look at this “after” picture and see for yourself how much the US aggression has “improved” Iraq, and how much better off the people must be now that they're ruled by the Bush Cartel rather than Hussein and his psychotic kids. Welcome to Baghdad 2004:

Big improvement, right? Maybe if you're lucky, Bush's policies can make your city look like this too.

I've heard a lot of noise about how we're risking Iraq becoming a religious extremist state like Iran. Oooh. Oh no. I've even made this noise myself here, but I didn't get it — run the numbers for yourself. Unfortunately the sad truth is that America has more religious extremism by the numbers than Iran or Iraq have — 44% of Americans currently identify themselves as Evangelical Born-Again Christians, attend church regularly, pray, and consider themselves devout. The vast majority believe that the rapture is coming ASAP, or to put it in clearer terms, we're talking about history's largest doomsday cult.

And guess what Southern Baptist who's publicly professed a belief that the second coming is upon us has his hands on the nukes? I saw a TV minister a few days ago telling his flock not to prepare for the future, because the prophecies of Reveletion will unfold before that. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? Well, tell that to the 100 million Americans who have pledged to die for it.

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That's an understatement

Monday, November 22, 2004

I liked this (from tomorrow's update) in a geeky-cute kind of way (real caption). If I ever decided to run mainstream advertising in vanilla publications, this is probably how I'd do it.

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