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Imperialism Is Capitalism’s Life Support System: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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Just another friendly reminder that establishment propaganda is the single most overlooked and under-emphasized aspect of our society and the left will never accomplish any of its goals until it prioritizes countering mass-scale manipulation above all else.

Western imperialism is capitalism’s life support system. Without the US-centralized empire constantly sabotaging socialist governments, propping up global financial institutions and controlling commerce and currency at gunpoint, capitalism would’ve died long ago.

Pull the plug.

Capitalism is collectivism in denial. Money only works the way it works and exists the way it exists because we all collectively agree to pretend that those made-up, imaginary conceptual constructs are real. The collective is free to change that collective agreement at any time.

Capitalism is collectivism. If the collective wants to switch to another form of collectivism that doesn’t let people starve and die for not having enough imaginary numbers in their bank accounts, the collective is free to change the rules of its collective improvisation.

Becoming more conservative as you age isn’t maturity, it’s an admission that your values are based entirely on securing your own net worth.

Representation is important so that everyone can buy into the fiction that anyone can make it to the top in this system.

Silicon Valley coordinates its censorship of speech with the United States government, which is really just government censorship with a middle man. Government censorship outsourced to corporations is still government censorship, in the same way that a military occupation outsourced to mercenaries is still a military occupation.

We’re always just talking about different iterations of the same single event: the wealthy and powerful want more wealth and power, and stories are spun to advance this agenda. This same one event plays out in different forms day after day after day. That’s all we’re ever seeing.

The way Democrats constantly blame Republican obstructionism for their own obstruction of progress reminds me of the time I was drugged and raped in a hotel bathroom. I remember fumbling at the door latch trying to get it open and my attacker saying “Uh-oh, we’re locked in!” Then I looked down and saw his foot against the door.

Stop protecting sexual predators. All of them, not just the ones in the rival political faction. This sick dynamic where each side only criticizes the predation of the other side rests on the unspoken, bat shit insane premise that only the other faction has men who are predators.

The way sexual predation by powerful men is only ever attacked by their political rivals proves that rape still in 2021 is not taken seriously by our society. Still in 2021 it’s “Yes rape culture is bad, half of us will deal with it when it is politically convenient for us to do so.” Still to this day it is first and foremost a weapon of political convenience, not an urgent problem which must be solved.

If you want to protect the interests of your political faction, turn your political faction into a space where women are nurtured into strong people instead of destroyed by sexual predation. You’re protecting poison that is poisoning your own fucking party.

Being “on the left” can become a very treasured and aggressively protected part of someone’s identity. That’s why criticizing such a person’s perspective from the left can land you on their shit list for life: for them it feels like you’re attacking their core identity, as much as if you’d physically attacked them.

Too many seekers of enlightenment experience a significant shift in consciousness and then immediately ruin it by asking “Now how can I make this serve me?” instead of “How can I serve this?”

Anger is like strength: it can be used productively or destructively. It can be used in a very violent, irresponsible and unconscious way, or it can be used to push someone out of your sovereign area where they have overextended. The trouble for us as a collective is that at this point in time our anger is deliberately redirected everywhere except where it belongs.

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How Canadian churches are helping their communities cope with the wildfires

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As wildfires burn across Canada, churches are finding ways to support their members and the broader community directly impacted by the crisis.

According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, as of June 13, there are 462 active fires across Canada – and 236 of them classified as out of control fires.

Whether it’s through phone calls or donations to community members, here’s how a few churches across Canada are handling active wildfires and the aftermath in their regions.

Westwood Hills, N.S.: St. Nicholas Anglican Church

In Nova Scotia, St. Nicholas Anglican Church and other churches in the area are collecting money for grocery cards to give to families impacted by the Tantallon wildfire. 

Right outside of Halifax, N.S., the Tantallon wildfire destroyed 151 homes. More than 16,000 people evacuated the area due to the fire.

The fire is now considered contained, but Tanya Moxley, the treasurer at St. Nicholas is organizing efforts to get grocery gift cards into the hands of impacted families.

As of June 12, four churches in the area – St. Nicholas, Parish of French Village, St Margaret of Scotland and St John the Evangelist – raised nearly $3,500. The money will be split for families’ groceries between five schools in the area impacted by the wildfire.

Moxley said she felt driven to raise this money after she heard the principal of her child’s school was using his own money to buy groceries for impacted families in their area.

“[For] most of those people who were evacuated, the power was off in their subdivision for three, four or five days,” she said. “Even though they went home and their house was still standing, the power was off and they lost all their groceries.”

Moxley said many people in the area are still “reeling” from the fires. She said the church has an important role to help community members during this time.

“We’re called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless and all that stuff, right? So this is it. This is like where the rubber hits the road.”

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Is it ever OK to steal from a grocery store?

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Mythologized in the legend of Robin Hood and lyricized in Les Misérables, it’s a debate as old as time: is it ever permissible to steal food? And if so, under what conditions? Now, amid Canada’s affordability crisis, the dilemma has extended beyond theatrical debate and into grocery stores.

Although the idea that theft is wrong is both a legally enshrined and socially accepted norm, the price of groceries can also feel criminally high to some — industry data shows that grocery stores can lose between $2,000 and $5,000 a week on average from theft. According to Statistics Canada, most grocery item price increases surged by double digits between 2021 and 2022. To no one’s surprise, grocery store theft is reportedly on the rise as a result. And if recent coverage of the issue rings true, some Canadians don’t feel bad about shoplifting. But should they?

Kieran Oberman, an associate professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom, coined the term “re-distributive theft” in his 2012 paper “Is Theft Wrong?” In simplest terms, redistributive theft is based on the idea that people with too little could ethically take from those who have too much.

“Everybody, when they think about it, accepts that theft is sometimes permissible if you make the case extreme enough,” Oberman tells me over Zoom. “The question is, when exactly is it permissible?”

Almost no one, Oberman argues, believes the current distribution of wealth across the world is just. We have an inkling that theft is bad, but that inequality is too. As more and more Canadians feel the pinch of inflation, grocery store heirs accumulate riches — Loblaw chair and president Galen Weston, for instance, received a 55 percent boost in compensation in 2022, taking in around $8.4 million for the year. Should someone struggling with rising prices feel guilty when they, say, “forget” to scan a bundle of zucchini?

https://broadview.org/stealing-groceries/
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The homeless refugee crisis in Toronto illustrates Canada’s broken promises

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UPDATE 07/18/2023: A coalition of groups arranged a bus to relocate refugees to temporarily stay at a North York church on Monday evening, according to CBC, CP24 and Toronto Star reports.

Canadians live in a time of threadbare morality. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Toronto’s entertainment district, where partygoers delight in spending disposable income while skirting refugees sleeping on sidewalks. The growing pile of luggage at the downtown corner of Peter and Richmond streets resembles the lost baggage section at Pearson airport but is the broken-hearted terminus at the centre of a cruel city.

At the crux of a refugee funding war between the municipal and federal governments are those who have fled persecution for the promise of Canada’s protection. Until June 1, asylum seekers used to arrive at the airport and be sent to Toronto’s Streets to Homes Referral Assessment Centre at 129 Peter St. in search of shelter beds. Now, Toronto’s overcrowded shelter system is closed to these newcomers, so they sleep on the street.

New mayor Olivia Chow pushed the federal government Wednesday for at least $160 million to cope with the surge of refugees in the shelter system. She rightly highlights that refugees are a federal responsibility. In response, the department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada points to hundreds of millions in dollars already allocated to cities across Canada through the Interim Housing Assistance Program, while Ontario says it has given nearly $100 million to organizations that support refugees. But these efforts are simply not enough to deliver on Canada’s benevolent promise to the world’s most vulnerable.

The lack of federal generosity and finger-pointing by the city has orchestrated a moral crisis. It’s reminiscent of the crisis south of the border, where Texas governor Greg Abbott keeps bussing migrants to cities located in northern Democratic states. Without the necessary resources, information, and sometimes the language skills needed to navigate the bureaucratic mazes, those who fled turbulent homelands for Canada have become political pawns.

But Torontonians haven’t always been this callous.

In Ireland Park, at Lake Ontario’s edge, five statues of gaunt and grateful refugees gaze at their new home: Toronto circa 1847. These statues honour a time when Toronto, with a population of only 20,000 people, welcomed 38,500 famine-stricken migrants from Ireland. It paralleled the “Come From Away” event of 9/11 in Gander, N.L., where the population doubled overnight, and the people discovered there was indeed more than enough for all. It was a time when the city lived up to its moniker as “Toronto, The Good.”

Now, as a wealthy city of three million people, the city’s residents are tasked with supporting far fewer newcomers. Can we not recognize the absurdity in claiming scarcity?

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