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On Not Feeling Bad for House Flippers and Making Wagers on The Narrow’s Future

Tea & Two Slices is a long-running news round-up by NEEDS frontman and veteran restaurant dishwasher Sean Orr, who lives and works in Gastown. He is very aware of his privilege, so there’s really no need to remind him of it.

This has been common knowledge for a couple of years now – 11-storey rental housing building set to replace Main Street’s Narrow Lounge – but who wants to make a bet that the real estate marketing company is going to call it The Narrow?

Hey, remember when the real estate bosses assured us it wasn’t foreign money propping up prices? “The seller is not happy, but it’s just the reality and for whatever reason, they had to sell”. Hmm, let me guess…by “for whatever reason” you mean to say that they bought it with the express intent of greedily flipping it for a big profit 20 months later?

CP Rail confirms 3 crew members die in B.C. grain car derailment. The Wobblies comment:

Under capitalism, if the profit is high enough, the health and lives of us workers will always be expendable. It’s our collective strength and action, not the benevolence of the boss, that can make our conditions safe. An injury to one is an injury to all!

The best ad of the Super Bowl was this one by Unifor: GM Leaves Canadians Out in the Cold. It could have done without the Mexican fear-mongering and more with the “let’s nationalize GM” but hey, it was a bold move and GM tried to stop it from airing, so you know the message hit home:

In other union news: Canada’s largest union sides with maligned Venezuela president over Canadian government. At least someone has a backbone and can see past the blatant oil grab and “revolt of the well off” as toed by the mainstream media. The NDP on the other hand? Not so much.

Of course, it shouldn’t be surprising that our corporate media is confusing things in Venezuela. They gave column space to Jordan Peterson: It’s ideology vs. science in psychology’s war on boys and men. When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. There is no war on men and men are not the victim. Be better.

Seriously, how can you read news report after news report of fragile white men committing crime after crime because they feel entitled to a woman’s body? Why incels are a ‘real and present threat’ for Canadians.

Incoming: The dog-whistlers over at the UBC Free Speech Club are hosting Stefan “Not an Argument” Molyneux and Lauren “Fired from Rebel Media” Southern.

Bonus: Did Bill Nye just suggest the U.S. will have to annex Canada to grow crops?

There are 7 comments

  1. Love how this joker links to a five year old story to justify his continued support for the repressive regime in Venezuela, labelling it all as a “revolt of the well off”.

    Meanwhile in the real world, three million people are now refugees as conditions in the country spiral downward daily: https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/12/1028541

    When are folks going to admit that Chavez was a self-serving know-nothing just like Trump? And that Maduro just played a game of follow-the-leader to its bitter end.

    Oh wait…they called themselves socialist, so it’s all good.

  2. Just as I cherry picked articles, so did you, as there was one from February 3rd. And yes you are right, there are more refugees, that’s what US imperialism and sanctions create.

  3. Do you really want to publicly argue that the US sanctions against PDVSA as of January 28, 2019 were the primary cause of this mess?

    This soft spot of some of us on the left for Chavez/Maduro leaves us all looking bad.

    This is not unlike many a Trump voter who now regret it but not of courage to admit they were wrong…

  4. Ha ha Andrew. But yeah. They lied about Iran. They lied about Vietnam. They lied about Chile. They lied about Iraq. They lied about Afghanistan. They lied about Iraq (again). They lied about Libya. They lied about Syria. But sure this time it’s for a good cause and has nothing to do with them having the largest oil reserve in the world.

  5. Socialism has been so bad for Venezuelans, that they were actually much better off (and had more freedoms) during 4 dictatorships. State interventionism is not new, it began in the 1950s, and went turbo after 1998 and began it’s climb to theoretical perfection after 2013.

    Brilliant strategy; bring starvation, misery & crime to the citizens, causing almost 10% of the population to flee, which frees up the remaining spoils. This is a planned humanitarian crisis. The only good thing to come out of it will be the warning to other nations.

  6. You’re right about one thing, “This is a planned humanitarian crisis”. But it wasn’t caused by socialism and anybody that is telling you otherwise is a capitalist.

On Ken Sim’s So-Called “Swagger” and ABC’S Class War

Sean Orr is back from his hiatus with a rundown of the local headlines that have been running on a ticker tape through his mind over the past six months...

On Post-Election Recuperation, Platform Paradoxes and Refund Communities

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr finds irony in "safety, affordability, and sustainability", and shouts out a bunch of amazing local organizations working on the frontlines.

On Running for City Council, Playing Whack-a-Mole with Homelessness, and the Public Washroom Deficit

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr finds a park ranger with a grudge, a gross misuse of air quotes and Tripadvisor slander.

On Living in a City Preoccupied with Street Cleaning, Chandeliers, and Campaigns Against the Homeless

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr hones in on the recent Langley shootings, and the ongoing criminalizing and dehumanizing of the homeless population.