Propagandhi

Haiti Still Totally Fucked

I feel indebt­ed to peo­ple with healthy atten­tion spans. I feel indebt­ed to peo­ple who are com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing through on a train of thought and action guid­ed by strong, humane prin­ci­ples. With­out them, i’d essen­tial­ly be just anoth­er dum­my sit­ting around wait­ing for the next serv­ing of info­tain­ment to pass the time before i die. 

So thank­ful­ly, we have peo­ple like Amy Good­man of Democ​ra​cyNow​.org who has been com­pil­ing a detailed overview of where Haiti stands 6‑months after we all watched Port-Au-Prince lev­eled by an earth­quake and were momen­tar­i­ly moved to do some­thing to help. 

The bad news is of course, that almost none of the des­per­ate­ly need­ed aid mon­ey pledged by wealthy nations while the head­lines and pho­to ops were in full swing has been paid to Haiti’s recon­struc­tion efforts, leav­ing the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in night­mare conditions. 

If the obvi­ous hor­ror of the human toll being exact­ed in Haiti by this neg­li­gence isn’t enough to moti­vate us here in the First World to help, per­haps we should con­sid­er what kind of prece­dent it sets for the inevitable moment when the city/​province/​state in which we live becomes the epi­cen­ter for some over-the-top nat­ur­al or human-made dis­as­ter. Will any­one be there to help us? Or will they just fol­low prece­dent and use it as a pho­to op and make pledges that will nev­er be kept while our fam­i­lies suf­fer and die in squalor? 

To be hon­est, that is the prime moti­va­tion behind any involve­ment i’ve ever had in any­thing to do with pol­i­tics or activism or any garbage like that: if they can do it to those peo­ple, they can do it to me. To me, jus­tice isn’t about some lib­er­al do-good­er non­sense, it’s about self-preser­va­tion. i know it’s bor­ing com­pared to music and sports and movies and beer and irony and being clever and all that, but I believe it is in our best inter­ests to pay atten­tion and do some­thing to help when oth­er peo­ple are get­ting fucked over. 

We still rec­om­mend finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing Part­ners In Health direct­ly. Or if you’re one of those peo­ple who just has to get some­thing in return, you can make that same dona­tion in exchange for a down­load of 3 fun songs recent­ly recov­ered from our ear­ly records. 

Speak­ing of sports, for­mer NHL enforcer Georges Laraque and even cur­rent Canucks d‑man Dan Hamhuis are encour­ag­ing peo­ple not too for­get about Haiti, so as you can see, the two things don’t have to be mutu­al­ly exclusive.

In oth­er news, fuck are you peo­ple going to get son­i­cal­ly slapped in the fuck­ing face by our new stuff. haha. 

Bad times at the Calgary Stampede.

4 ani­mals are dead with­in 24 hours at the Cal­gary Stampede. Hmm..I thought they said that abus­ing ani­mals for fun was one of the signs a kid might grow up to be a ser­i­al killer? Oh well, every­body’s doing it! Sure the Stam­pede is a tra­di­tion in Cal­gary, so is Agri­bi­tion in Regi­na and, in some oth­er places, so are cock­fights, dog fights and bear bait­ing. I under­stand; I used to have my own gun hol­ster, hat, vest, and chaps, my favorite uncle was a stam­pede pick up man, I even had the rodeo queen come with me to school for show and tell once but there is a time when we’ve got to come to terms with the fact that the unpar­al­leled joy of watch­ing cow­boys twist steer necks and men­ace poor bulls and hors­es to the point that the ani­mals jump around like mani­acs must come to an end. There’s no use in try­ing to extend our dement­ed child­hoods beyond their expiry date. Feel free to rope each oth­er, tie things around your nuts (if you’ve got them) or the nuts of your will­ing, yet buck­ing, friends if you want to but leave the poor ani­mals out of it. Thanks.

Propagandhi is playing Best Friends Days in Richmond Virginia on August 20th!!!

Yes, I speaketh the truth. We are play­ing in Rich­mond Vir­gini­a’s annu­al Best Friends Day Fes­ti­val with Munic­i­pal Waste, Deep Sleep, Sav­age Brew­tal­i­ty and, appar­ent­ly, a spe­cial guest that’s yet to be announced ( hope­ful­ly the ghost of Don Knotts). This spe­cial gig will be at the ​“Canal Club” on 1545 E. Cary St. Rich­mond Vir­ginia. For more info you can go here. Our good bud­dy, Kee­bler, says this fes­ti­val is a lot of fun and the next day we get to go to a water park to get stinky and watch Neg­a­tive Approach!

This week is the the 20^th anniver­sary stand­off between Mohawks and the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment forces in the Mohawk vil­lage of Kanehsa­take near the town of Oka in Que­bec. I have a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in this anniver­sary because the cri­sis was also an extreme­ly impor­tant moment in my life where I start­ed learn more about indige­nous rights, and strug­gles. Con­se­quent­ly, that was the year I changed my mind­set for the bet­ter. To see more about the Oka stand­off go here to watch the great movie Kanehsa­take: 270 Years Of Resistance. 

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

Here, the for­mer direc­tor of the Israeli office for Physi­cians for Human Rights, Neve Gor­don, offers a short and clear argu­ment in favor of the BDS (boy­cott, divest­ment and sanc­tions) cam­paign against Israeli apartheid.

The Immoral of the Story...

…is that when you are a West­ern sol­dier occu­py­ing Arab land, you are absolute­ly free to anni­hi­late civil­ians. Just don’t fuckin tell any­one about it.

The Anti-Empire Report

Some­times when i read these reports, i won­der if William Blum is actu­al­ly Jord writ­ing under a pseu­do­nym. This one is espe­cial­ly sat­is­fy­ing in the shad­ow of the annu­al patri­ot­ic orgies we just endured here in Cana­da and the USA.